TimeSeriesExam: A time series understanding exam

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Cai, Yifu, Choudhry, Arjun, Goswami, Mononito, Dubrawski, Artur
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Cai, Yifu
Choudhry, Arjun
Goswami, Mononito
Dubrawski, Artur
author_facet Cai, Yifu
Choudhry, Arjun
Goswami, Mononito
Dubrawski, Artur
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated a remarkable ability to model time series data. These capabilities can be partly explained if LLMs understand basic time series concepts. However, our knowledge of what these models understand about time series data remains relatively limited. To address this gap, we introduce TimeSeriesExam, a configurable and scalable multiple-choice question exam designed to assess LLMs across five core time series understanding categories: pattern recognition, noise understanding, similarity analysis, anomaly detection, and causality analysis. TimeSeriesExam comprises of over 700 questions, procedurally generated using 104 carefully curated templates and iteratively refined to balance difficulty and their ability to discriminate good from bad models. We test 7 state-of-the-art LLMs on the TimeSeriesExam and provide the first comprehensive evaluation of their time series understanding abilities. Our results suggest that closed-source models such as GPT-4 and Gemini understand simple time series concepts significantly better than their open-source counterparts, while all models struggle with complex concepts such as causality analysis. We believe that the ability to programatically generate questions is fundamental to assessing and improving LLM's ability to understand and reason about time series data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_14752
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TimeSeriesExam: A time series understanding exam
Cai, Yifu
Choudhry, Arjun
Goswami, Mononito
Dubrawski, Artur
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated a remarkable ability to model time series data. These capabilities can be partly explained if LLMs understand basic time series concepts. However, our knowledge of what these models understand about time series data remains relatively limited. To address this gap, we introduce TimeSeriesExam, a configurable and scalable multiple-choice question exam designed to assess LLMs across five core time series understanding categories: pattern recognition, noise understanding, similarity analysis, anomaly detection, and causality analysis. TimeSeriesExam comprises of over 700 questions, procedurally generated using 104 carefully curated templates and iteratively refined to balance difficulty and their ability to discriminate good from bad models. We test 7 state-of-the-art LLMs on the TimeSeriesExam and provide the first comprehensive evaluation of their time series understanding abilities. Our results suggest that closed-source models such as GPT-4 and Gemini understand simple time series concepts significantly better than their open-source counterparts, while all models struggle with complex concepts such as causality analysis. We believe that the ability to programatically generate questions is fundamental to assessing and improving LLM's ability to understand and reason about time series data.
title TimeSeriesExam: A time series understanding exam
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14752