Comparing Prior and Learned Time Representations in Transformer Models of Timeseries

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Koliou, Natalia, Boura, Tatiana, Konstantopoulos, Stasinos, Meramveliotakis, George, Kosmadakis, George
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Koliou, Natalia
Boura, Tatiana
Konstantopoulos, Stasinos
Meramveliotakis, George
Kosmadakis, George
author_facet Koliou, Natalia
Boura, Tatiana
Konstantopoulos, Stasinos
Meramveliotakis, George
Kosmadakis, George
contents What sets timeseries analysis apart from other machine learning exercises is that time representation becomes a primary aspect of the experiment setup, as it must adequately represent the temporal relations that are relevant for the application at hand. In the work described here we study wo different variations of the Transformer architecture: one where we use the fixed time representation proposed in the literature and one where the time representation is learned from the data. Our experiments use data from predicting the energy output of solar panels, a task that exhibits known periodicities (daily and seasonal) that is straight-forward to encode in the fixed time representation. Our results indicate that even in an experiment where the phenomenon is well-understood, it is difficult to encode prior knowledge due to side-effects that are difficult to mitigate. We conclude that research work is needed to work the human into the learning loop in ways that improve the robustness and trust-worthiness of the network.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_12476
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Comparing Prior and Learned Time Representations in Transformer Models of Timeseries
Koliou, Natalia
Boura, Tatiana
Konstantopoulos, Stasinos
Meramveliotakis, George
Kosmadakis, George
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
What sets timeseries analysis apart from other machine learning exercises is that time representation becomes a primary aspect of the experiment setup, as it must adequately represent the temporal relations that are relevant for the application at hand. In the work described here we study wo different variations of the Transformer architecture: one where we use the fixed time representation proposed in the literature and one where the time representation is learned from the data. Our experiments use data from predicting the energy output of solar panels, a task that exhibits known periodicities (daily and seasonal) that is straight-forward to encode in the fixed time representation. Our results indicate that even in an experiment where the phenomenon is well-understood, it is difficult to encode prior knowledge due to side-effects that are difficult to mitigate. We conclude that research work is needed to work the human into the learning loop in ways that improve the robustness and trust-worthiness of the network.
title Comparing Prior and Learned Time Representations in Transformer Models of Timeseries
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.12476