We present the first algorithms that allow the estimation of non-negative Lyapunov exponents from an experimental time series. Lyapunov exponents, which provide a qualitative and quantitative characterization of dynamical behavior, are related to the exponentially fast divergence or convergence of nearby orbits in phase space. A system with one or more positive Lyapunov exponents is defined to be chaotic. Our method is rooted conceptually in a previously developed technique that could only be applied to analytically defined model systems: we monitor the long-term growth rate of small volume elements in an attractor. The method is tested on model systems with known Lyapunov spectra, and applied to data for the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction and Couette-Taylor flow. Contents 1.

After the stock market crash of October 19, 1987, interest in nonlinear dynamics, especially deterministic chaotic dynamics, has increased in both the financial press and the academic literature. This has come about because the frequency of large moves in stock markets is greater than would be expected under a normal distribution. There are a number of possible explanations. A popular one is that the stock market is governed by chaotic dynamics. What exactly is chaos and how is it related to nonlinear dynamics? How does one detect chaos? Is there chaos in financial markets? Are there other explanations of the movements of financial prices other than chaos? The purpose of this paper is to explore these issues. -1Chaos has captured the fancy of many macroeconomists and financial economists. The attractiveness of chaotic dynamics is its ability to generate large movements which appear to be random, with greater frequency than linear models. As a result, there has been an explosion of pa...

A Bayesian ensemble learning method is introduced for unsupervised extraction of dynamic processes from noisy data. The data are assumed to be generated by an unknown nonlinear mapping from unknown factors. The dynamics of the factors are modeled using a nonlinear statespace model. The nonlinear mappings in the model are represented using multilayer perceptron networks. The proposed method is computationally demanding, but it allows the use of higher dimensional nonlinear latent variable models than other existing approaches. Experiments with chaotic data show that the new method is able to blindly estimate the factors and the dynamic process which have generated the data. It clearly outperforms currently available nonlinear prediction techniques in this very di#cult test problem.

We present a method for the unsupervised segmentation of data streams originating from different unknown sources which alternate in time. We use an architecture consisting of competing neural networks. Memory is included in order to resolve ambiguities of input-output relations. In order to obtain maximal specialization, the competition is adiabatically increased during training. Our method achieves almost perfect identification and segmentation in the case of switching chaotic dynamics where input manifolds overlap and input-output relations are ambiguous. Only a small dataset is needed for the training proceedure. Applications to time series from complex systems demonstrate the potential relevance of our approach for time series analysis and short-term prediction. 1 Introduction Neural networks provide frameworks for the representation of relations present in data. Especially in the fields of classification and time series prediction, neural networks Corresponding author, email:k...

This paper describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the Laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under Office of Naval Research contract N00014-89- J-3202, and in part by the National Science Foundation grant MIP-9001651. The author is also supported by a G.Y. Chu Fellowship

Financial forecasting is an example of a signal processing problem which is challenging due to small sample sizes, high noise, non-stationarity, and non-linearity. Neural networks have been very successful in a number of signal processing applications. We discuss fundamental limitations and inherent difficulties when using neural networks for the processing of high noise, small sample size signals. We introduce a new intelligent signal processing method which addresses the difficulties. The method proposed uses conversion into a symbolic representation with a selforganizing map, and grammatical inference with recurrent neural networks. We apply the method to the prediction of daily foreign exchange rates, addressing difficulties with non-stationarity, overfitting, and unequal a priori class probabilities, and we find significant predictability in comprehensive experiments covering 5 different foreign exchange rates. The method correctly predicts the direction of change for th...

Detecting the presence of chaos in a dynamical system is an important problem that is solved by measuring the largest Lyapunov exponent. Lyapunov exponents quantify the exponential divergence of initially close state-space trajectories and estimate the amount of chaos in a system. We present a new method for calculating the largest Lyapunov exponent from an experimental time series. The method follows directly from the definition of the largest Lyapunov exponent and is accurate because it takes advantage of all the available data. We show that the algorithm is fast, easy to implement, and robust to changes in the following quantities: embedding dimension, size of data set, reconstruction delay, and noise level. Furthermore, one may use the algorithm to calculate simultaneously the correlation dimension. Thus, one sequence of computations will yield an estimate of both the level of chaos and the system complexity.

Constructing models from time series with nontrivial dynamics involves the problem of how to choose the best model from within a class of models, or to choose between competing classes. This paper discusses a method of building nonlinear models of possibly chaotic systems from data, while maintaining good robustness against noise. The models that are built are close to the simplest possible according to a description length criterion. The method will deliver a linear model if that has shorter description length than a nonlinear model. We show how our models can be used for prediction, smoothing and interpolation in the usual way. We also show how to apply the results to identification of chaos by detecting the presence of homoclinic orbits directly from time series. 1 The Model Selection Problem As our understanding of chaotic and other nonlinear phenomena has grown, it has become apparent that linear models are inadequate to model most dynamical processes. Nevertheless, linear models...

Abstract — Three networks are compared for low false alarm stock trend predictions. Short-term trends, particularly attractive for neural network analysis, can be used profitably in scenarios such as option trading, but only with significant risk. Therefore, we focus on limiting false alarms, which improves the risk/reward ratio by preventing losses. To predict stock trends, we exploit time delay, recurrent, and probabilistic neural networks (TDNN, RNN, and PNN, respectively), utilizing conjugate gradient and multistream extended Kalman filter training for TDNN and RNN. We also discuss different predictability analysis techniques and perform an analysis of predictability based on a history of daily closing price. Our results indicate that all the networks are feasible, the primary preference being one of convenience. Index Terms—Conjugate gradient, extended Kalman filter, financial engineering, financial forecasting, predictability analysis, probablistic neural network, recurrent neural network, stock market forecasting, time delay neural network, time series analysis, time series prediction, trend prediction. I.

Abstract. Today, many private households as well as broadcasting or film companies own large collections of digital music plays. These are time series that differ from, e.g., weather reports or stocks market data. The task is normally that of classification, not prediction of the next value or recognizing a shape or motif. New methods for extracting features that allow to classify audio data have been developed. However, the development of appropriate feature extraction methods is a tedious effort, particularly because every new classification task requires tailoring the feature set anew. This paper presents a unifying framework for feature extraction from value series. Operators of this framework can be combined to feature extraction methods automatically, using a genetic programming approach. The construction of features is guided by the performance of the learning classifier which uses the features. Our approach to automatic feature extraction requires a balance between the completeness of the methods on one side and the tractability of searching for appropriate methods on the other side. In this paper, some theoretical considerations illustrate the trade-off. After the feature extraction, a second process learns a classifier from the transformed data. The practical use of the methods is shown by two types of experiments: classification of genres and classification according to user preferences. 1.