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Main Authors: Zeng, Chen, Wang, Jiahui, Wang, Qiao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23518
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author Zeng, Chen
Wang, Jiahui
Wang, Qiao
author_facet Zeng, Chen
Wang, Jiahui
Wang, Qiao
contents Existing theory suggests that Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) can overcome the spectral bias commonly observed in neural networks under the assumption that inputs are statistically independent. However, this assumption does not hold in time series forecasting (TSF), where inputs are lagged observations with strong temporal autocorrelation. Through theoretical analysis and empirical validation, we obtain an unexpected finding: temporal autocorrelation reintroduces spectral bias in KANs, and the bias becomes increasingly pronounced as the degree of autocorrelation increases. This suggests that standard KANs may face substantial difficulties in TSF with strongly autocorrelated inputs. To address this problem, we introduce the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to reduce the correlations among the network inputs. As expected, experimental results reveal that DCT preprocessing substantially reduces the observed low-frequency preference in TSF. This result also corroborates that the spectral bias of KANs in TSF tasks is indeed induced by the autocorrelation among input variables.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_23518
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Autocorrelation Reintroduces Spectral Bias in KANs for Time Series Forecasting
Zeng, Chen
Wang, Jiahui
Wang, Qiao
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Existing theory suggests that Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) can overcome the spectral bias commonly observed in neural networks under the assumption that inputs are statistically independent. However, this assumption does not hold in time series forecasting (TSF), where inputs are lagged observations with strong temporal autocorrelation. Through theoretical analysis and empirical validation, we obtain an unexpected finding: temporal autocorrelation reintroduces spectral bias in KANs, and the bias becomes increasingly pronounced as the degree of autocorrelation increases. This suggests that standard KANs may face substantial difficulties in TSF with strongly autocorrelated inputs. To address this problem, we introduce the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to reduce the correlations among the network inputs. As expected, experimental results reveal that DCT preprocessing substantially reduces the observed low-frequency preference in TSF. This result also corroborates that the spectral bias of KANs in TSF tasks is indeed induced by the autocorrelation among input variables.
title Autocorrelation Reintroduces Spectral Bias in KANs for Time Series Forecasting
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23518