The basic ideals underlying the Kalman filter are outlined in this paper without direct recourse to the complex formulae normally associated with this method. The novel feature of the paper is its reliance on a new algebraic system based on the first two moments of the multivariate normal...

The segmentation problem arises in many applications in data mining, A.I. and statistics. In this paper, we consider segmenting simple time series. We develop two Bayesian approaches for segmenting a time series, namely the Bayes Factor approach, and the Minimum Message Length (MML) approach. We...

The aim of this paper is to examine the measurement of persistence in a range of time series models nested in the framework of Cramer (1961). This framework is a generalization of the Wold (1938) decomposition for stationary time series which, in addition to accommodating the standard I(0) and...

Applications of exponential smoothing to forecast time series usually rely on three basic methods: simple exponential smoothing, trend corrected exponential smoothing and a seasonal variation thereof. A common approach to select the method appropriate to a particular time series is based on...

Automatic forecasts of large numbers of univariate time series are often needed in business and other contexts. We describe two automatic forecasting algorithms that have been implemented in the forecast package for R. The first is based on innovations state space models that underly exponential...

This paper develops a new non-linear model to analyse the business cycle by exploiting the relationship between the asymmetrical behaviour of the cycle and leading indicators. The model proposed is an innovations form of the structural model underlying simple exponential smoothing that is...

An approach to exponential smoothing that relies on a linear single source of error state space model is outlined. A maximum likelihood method for the estimation of associated smoothing parameters is developed. Commonly used restrictions on the smoothing parameters are rationalised. Issues...

Forecasting large numbers of time series is a costly and time-consuming exercise. Before forecasting a large number of series that are logically connected in some way, the authors can first cluster them into groups of similar series. In this paper they investigate forecasting the series in each...

A well known property of the Beveridge Nelson decomposition is that the innovations in the permanent and transitory components are perfectly correlated. We use a single source of error state space model to exploit this property and perform a Beveridge Nelson decomposition. The single source of...

This paper studies linear and linear autoregressive leading indicator models of business cycles in OECD countries. The models use the spread between short-term and long-term interest rates as leading indicators for GDP, and their success in capturing business cycles gauged by the non-parametric...