Achieving Time Series Reasoning Requires Rethinking Model Design, Tasks Formulation, and Evaluation

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Kong, Yaxuan, Yang, Yiyuan, Wang, Shiyu, Liu, Chenghao, Liang, Yuxuan, Jin, Ming, Zohren, Stefan, Pei, Dan, Liu, Yan, Wen, Qingsong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866917239867834368
author Kong, Yaxuan
Yang, Yiyuan
Wang, Shiyu
Liu, Chenghao
Liang, Yuxuan
Jin, Ming
Zohren, Stefan
Pei, Dan
Liu, Yan
Wen, Qingsong
author_facet Kong, Yaxuan
Yang, Yiyuan
Wang, Shiyu
Liu, Chenghao
Liang, Yuxuan
Jin, Ming
Zohren, Stefan
Pei, Dan
Liu, Yan
Wen, Qingsong
contents Understanding time series data is fundamental to many real-world applications. Recent work explores multimodal large language models (MLLMs) to enhance time series understanding with contextual information beyond numerical signals. This area has grown from 7 papers in 2023 to over 580 in 2025, yet existing methods struggle in real-world settings. We analyze 20 influential works from 2025 across model design, task formulation, and evaluation, and identify critical gaps: methods adapt NLP techniques with limited attention to core time series properties; tasks remain restricted to traditional prediction and classification; and evaluations emphasize benchmarks over robustness, interpretability, or decision relevance. We argue that achieving time series reasoning requires rethinking model design, task formulation, and evaluation together. We define time series reasoning, outline challenges and future directions, and call on researchers to develop unified frameworks for robust, interpretable, and decision-relevant reasoning in real-world applications. The material is available at https://github.com/Eleanorkong/Awesome-Time-Series-Reasoning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_01477
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Achieving Time Series Reasoning Requires Rethinking Model Design, Tasks Formulation, and Evaluation
Kong, Yaxuan
Yang, Yiyuan
Wang, Shiyu
Liu, Chenghao
Liang, Yuxuan
Jin, Ming
Zohren, Stefan
Pei, Dan
Liu, Yan
Wen, Qingsong
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Understanding time series data is fundamental to many real-world applications. Recent work explores multimodal large language models (MLLMs) to enhance time series understanding with contextual information beyond numerical signals. This area has grown from 7 papers in 2023 to over 580 in 2025, yet existing methods struggle in real-world settings. We analyze 20 influential works from 2025 across model design, task formulation, and evaluation, and identify critical gaps: methods adapt NLP techniques with limited attention to core time series properties; tasks remain restricted to traditional prediction and classification; and evaluations emphasize benchmarks over robustness, interpretability, or decision relevance. We argue that achieving time series reasoning requires rethinking model design, task formulation, and evaluation together. We define time series reasoning, outline challenges and future directions, and call on researchers to develop unified frameworks for robust, interpretable, and decision-relevant reasoning in real-world applications. The material is available at https://github.com/Eleanorkong/Awesome-Time-Series-Reasoning.
title Achieving Time Series Reasoning Requires Rethinking Model Design, Tasks Formulation, and Evaluation
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01477