Multivariate and multi-series LSTM - neural-network

I am trying to create a pollution prediction LSTM. I've seen an example on the web to cater for a Multivariate LSTM to predict the pollution levels for one city (Beijing), but what about more than one city? I don't really want a separate network for every city, I'd like a single generalised model/network for all x cities. But how do I feed that data into the LSTM?
Say I have the same data for each city, do I...
1) Train on all data for one city, then the next city, and so on until all cities are done.
2) Train data for all cities on date t, then data for all cities on t+1, then t+2 etc.
3) Something completely different.
Any thoughts?

I would try first the (1).
Also, you can try a multi inputs / multi outputs network. I mean you have 10 cities. Therefore, your network would have 10 RNN inputs and 10 outputs.
Here is a great tutorial on how to do it with Keras: https://keras.io/getting-started/functional-api-guide/
I'm not sure if it will work, but you can give it a try.

Related

multiple regressor time series producing one output

Absolute beginner here. I'm trying to use a neural network to predict price of a product that's being shipped while using temperature, deaths during a pandemic, rain volume, and a column of 0 and 1's (dummy variable).
So imagine that I have a dataset given those values as well as column giving me time in a year/week format.
I started reading Rob Hyndman's forecasting book but I haven't yet seen anything that can help me. One idea that I have is to make a variable that's going to take out each column of the dataframe and make it into a time series. For example, for rain, I can do something like
rain <- df$rain_inches cost<-mainset3 %>% select(approx_cost) raintimeseries <-ts(rain, frequency=52, start=c(2015,1), end=c(2021,5))
I would the same for the other regressors.
I want to use neural networks on each of the regressors to predict cost and then put them all together.
Ideally I'm thinking it would be a good idea to train on say, 3/4 ths of the time series data and test on the remain 1/4 and then possibly make predictions.
I'm now seeing that even if I am using one regressor I'm still left with a multivariate time series and I've only found examples online for univariate models.
I'd appreciate if someone could give me ideas on how to model my problem using neural networks
I saw this link Keras RNN with LSTM cells for predicting multiple output time series based on multiple intput time series
but I just see a bunch of functions and nowhere where I can actually insert my function
The solution to your problem is the same as for the univariate case you found online except for the fact that you just need to work differently with your feature/independent set. your y variable or cost variable remains as is but your X variables will have to be in 3 dimensions which is (Number of observations, time steps, number of independent variables)

Hidden Markov Model to predict the next state

I understood HMM so so but not training it very well. I could not figure out how I should setup training and testing in my case. I am going to explain my problem.
I am working on Foursquare check-in dataset to model a HMM to predict next venue category of a user (I assume it is the Forward algorithm).
First, I divided the area where these check-ins are reported into hexagonal grid. Let's say there are 200 hexagons. These hexagons are my hidden states. Then, I calculated transition probabilities for these hex cells by exploiting order of hex visits of users in time. The transition matrix is 200x200.
Second, I calculated emission probabilities by counting number of each category in every cell. There are 9 venue categories. Thus, emission matrix is 200x9.
Third, start probabilities are calculated by looking distribution of check-ins in each category.
Namely:
states = ('hex1', 'hex2', ..., 'hex200')
observations = ('category1', 'category2', ..., 'category9')
Till this point, everything is okay. However, I want to predict next category of a user if I know his/her previously located hexs and categories in a way.
I want to train my model, then test it and also show accuracy of my predictions according to the model. For this, the model should be trained with what kind of sequences? I cannot realize that how I predict the next category and more importantly, how can I setup the model to perform Expectation Maximization. Any effort to help me will be appreciated. If you want to explain these as code sample, you may write it in pseudo or MATLAB. Also, verbal explanation is okay.

How to use created "net" neural network object for prediction?

I used ntstool to create NAR (nonlinear Autoregressive) net object, by training on a 1x1247 input vector. (daily stock price for 6 years)
I have finished all the steps and saved the resulting net object to workspace.
Now I am clueless on how to use this object to predict the y(t) for example t = 2000, (I trained the model for t = 1:1247)
In some other threads, people recommended to use sim(net, t) function - however this will give me the same result for any value of t. (same with net(t) function)
I am not familiar with the specific neural net commands, but I think you are approaching this problem in the wrong way. Typically you want to model the evolution in time. You do this by specifying a certain window, say 3 months.
What you are training now is a single input vector, which has no information about evolution in time. The reason you always get the same prediction is because you only used a single point for training (even though it is 1247 dimensional, it is still 1 point).
You probably want to make input vectors of this nature (for simplicity, assume you are working with months):
[month1 month2; month2 month 3; month3 month4]
This example contains 2 training points with the evolution of 3 months. Note that they overlap.
Use the Network
After the network is trained and validated, the network object can be used to calculate the network response to any input. For example, if you want to find the network response to the fifth input vector in the building data set, you can use the following
a = net(houseInputs(:,5))
a =
34.3922
If you try this command, your output might be different, depending on the state of your random number generator when the network was initialized. Below, the network object is called to calculate the outputs for a concurrent set of all the input vectors in the housing data set. This is the batch mode form of simulation, in which all the input vectors are placed in one matrix. This is much more efficient than presenting the vectors one at a time.
a = net(houseInputs);
Each time a neural network is trained, can result in a different solution due to different initial weight and bias values and different divisions of data into training, validation, and test sets. As a result, different neural networks trained on the same problem can give different outputs for the same input. To ensure that a neural network of good accuracy has been found, retrain several times.
There are several other techniques for improving upon initial solutions if higher accuracy is desired. For more information, see Improve Neural Network Generalization and Avoid Overfitting.
strong text

Lake Visitor Modeling by Neural Networks

Let's say I want to model the amount of visitors at an arbitrary lake at specific time.
Given Data:
Time Series of Amount of Visitors for 12 lakes.
Weather Time Series for the 12 lakes
Number of Trees at lake
Percentage of grass/stone ground of the beach.
Hereby I want to use a Neural Network (NN) to model the amount of visitors and I have some essential questions which I want to introduce step by step. Note that the visitor time series shall not be used!
1) we only use the Inputs:
Time of Day
Day of Week
So there is two inputs and one output. I read of a rule of thumb which says that the hidden neurons should be chosen as
#input>=neurons>=#output.
Is the number of inputs here 2 or is it an estimate of the real amount of dependent variables (as weather, mood of persons, economical situation, ....). If yes so I should choose my hidden neurons as 1 or 2, correct?
2) If I want to include lake specific parameters as the number of treas or the ground ratio, can I just add these as additional inputs (constant for each of the twelve lakes) or would that not help for some reason? How could I assure that there is a causal connection between these inputs and the output?
3) For weather since it is a time series which weather values should I use. How do I get the optimal delay for example. Would Granger Causality be a mean to determine that?
Hope you can help. I just wanna discuss on the strength of NNs for modeling and want to hear your opinion. I would use Matlabs Neural Network Toolbox for this.
Thanks in advance.

Multi Step Prediction Neural Networks

I have been working with the matlab neural network toolkit. Here I am using the NARX network. I have a dataset consisting of prices of an object as well as the quantity of the object purchased over a period of time. Essential this network does one step prediction which is defined mathematically as follows:
y(t)= f (y(t −1),y(t −2),...,y(t −ny),x(t −1),x(t −2),...,x(t −nx))
Here y(t) is the price at time t and x is the amount. So the input features I am using are price and amount and the target is the price at time t+1. Suppose I have 100 records of such transactions and each transaction consists of the price and the amount.Then essentially my neural network can predict the price of the 101st transaction. This works fine for one step predictions. However, if i want to do multiple step predictions, so say i want to predict 10 transactions ahead(110th transaction), then I assume that i do a one step prediction of the price and then feed this back into the neural network. I keep doing this until I reach the 110th prediction. However, in this scenario, after i predict the 101st price , I can feed this price into the neural network to predict the 102nd price, however, I do not know the amount of the object at the 101st transaction. How do I go about this ? I was thinking about setting my targets to be the prices of transactions that are 10 transactions ahead of the current one, so that when I predict the 101st transaction, I am essentially predicting the price of the 110th transaction. Is this a viable solution or am i going about this in a completely wrong manner. Thanks in advance for any help
Similar to what kostas said, once you have the predicted 101 price, you can use all your data to predict the 101 amount, then use that to predict the 102 price, then use the 102 price to predict the 102 amount, etc. However, this compounds any error in your predictions for each variable. To mitigate that, you can add several other features, like a tapering discount on past values or a measure of error to use in the prediction (search temporal difference learning for similar ideas in the reinforcement learning realm).
I guess you can use a separate neural network to do time series prediction for x in order to produce x(t+1) up to x(t+10) and then use these values to feed another ANN to predict y(t).