Long-term time series prediction using OP-ELM

In this paper, an Optimally Pruned Extreme Learning Machine (OP-ELM) is applied to the problem of long-term time series prediction. Three known strategies for the long-term time series prediction i.e. Recursive, Direct and DirRec are considered in combination with OP-ELM and compared with a baseline linear least squares model and Least-Squares Support Vector Machines (LS-SVM). Among these three strategies DirRec is the most time consuming and its usage with nonlinear models like LS-SVM, where several hyperparameters need to be adjusted, leads to relatively heavy computations. It is shown that OP-ELM, being also a nonlinear model, allows reasonable computational time for the DirRec strategy. In all our experiments, except one, OP-ELM with DirRec strategy outperforms the linear model with any strategy. In contrast to the proposed algorithm, LS-SVM behaves unstably without variable selection. It is also shown that there is no superior strategy for OP-ELM: any of three can be the best. In addition, the prediction accuracy of an ensemble of OP-ELM is studied and it is shown that averaging predictions of the ensemble can improve the accuracy (Mean Square Error) dramatically. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.