OWA operators in regression problems

We consider an application of fuzzy logic connectives to statistical regression. We replace the standard least squares, least absolute deviation, and maximum likelihood criteria with an ordered weighted averaging (OWA) function of the residuals. Depending on the choice of the weights, we obtain the standard regression problems, high-breakdown robust methods (least median, least trimmed squares, and trimmed likelihood methods), as well as new formulations. We present various approaches to numerical solution of such regression problems. OWA-based regression is particularly useful in the presence of outliers, and we illustrate the performance of the new methods on several instances of linear regression problems with multiple outliers.<br /

Efficiency Comparison of Fuzzy Regression Models with the Penman-Monteith Method in Estimating of Monthly Reference Evapotranspiration of Neyshabour Plain

In this study, fuzzy linear and fuzzy least-squres regression approach was employed to estimate the monthly reference evapotranspiration of Neyshabour plain. The data used, including maximum temperature (Tmax), minimum temperature (Tmin), mean temperature (Tmean), relative humidity (RH), solar radiation (Rs) and wind speed (U2), were obtained from synaptic meteorological station of Neyshabour. Three different scenarios were designed to estimate the evapotranspiration for either fuzzy linear or fuzzy least-squres regression models. Mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), and the coefficient of determination (R2) were used to evaluate the performance fuzzy regression models and its comparison with FAO-56 Penman-Monteith. Results indicated that the fuzzy linear regression model in January and the fuzzy least squares regression model in October had the highest and lowest accuracy with R2 of 0.903 and 0.502, respectively. Among the new proposed models, the fuzzy linear regression under scenario FLR1 (Inputs included Tmax, Tmin, RH and U2) had the highest accuracy, however, in both regression models, despite having lower input parameters (Tmean, RH and Rs), the second scenario, was comparable with other and therefore it can be used in data deficit conditions as an optimal approach in determining ETo for irrigation planning and water resource management

Regression Driven F--Transform and Application to Smoothing of Financial Time Series

In this paper we propose to extend the definition of fuzzy transform in order to consider an interpolation of models that are richer than the standard fuzzy transform. We focus on polynomial models, linear in particular, although the approach can be easily applied to other classes of models. As an example of application, we consider the smoothing of time series in finance. A comparison with moving averages is performed using NIFTY 50 stock market index. Experimental results show that a regression driven fuzzy transform (RDFT) provides a smoothing approximation of time series, similar to moving average, but with a smaller delay. This is an important feature for finance and other application, where time plays a key role.Comment: IFSA-SCIS 2017, 5 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Different distance measures for fuzzy linear regression with Monte Carlo methods

The aim of this study was to determine the best distance measure for estimating the fuzzy linear regression model parameters with Monte Carlo (MC) methods. It is pointed out that only one distance measure is used for fuzzy linear regression with MC methods within the literature. Therefore, three different definitions of distance measure between two fuzzy numbers are introduced. Estimation accuracies of existing and proposed distance measures are explored with the simulation study. Distance measures are compared to each other in terms of estimation accuracy; hence this study demonstrates that the best distance measures to estimate fuzzy linear regression model parameters with MC methods are the distance measures defined by Kaufmann and Gupta (Introduction to fuzzy arithmetic theory and applications. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1991), Heilpern-2 (Fuzzy Sets Syst 91(2):259–268, 1997) and Chen and Hsieh (Aust J Intell Inf Process Syst 6(4):217–229, 2000). One the other hand, the worst distance measure is the distance measure used by Abdalla and Buckley (Soft Comput 11:991–996, 2007; Soft Comput 12:463–468, 2008). These results would be useful to enrich the studies that have already focused on fuzzy linear regression models

Forecasting and Forecast Combination in Airline Revenue Management Applications

Predicting a variable for a future point in time helps planning for unknown future situations and is common practice in many areas such as economics, finance, manufacturing, weather and natural sciences. This paper investigates and compares approaches to forecasting and forecast combination that can be applied to service industry in general and to airline industry in particular. Furthermore, possibilities to include additionally available data like passenger-based information are discussed

Identifying Real Estate Opportunities using Machine Learning

The real estate market is exposed to many fluctuations in prices because of existing correlations with many variables, some of which cannot be controlled or might even be unknown. Housing prices can increase rapidly (or in some cases, also drop very fast), yet the numerous listings available online where houses are sold or rented are not likely to be updated that often. In some cases, individuals interested in selling a house (or apartment) might include it in some online listing, and forget about updating the price. In other cases, some individuals might be interested in deliberately setting a price below the market price in order to sell the home faster, for various reasons. In this paper, we aim at developing a machine learning application that identifies opportunities in the real estate market in real time, i.e., houses that are listed with a price substantially below the market price. This program can be useful for investors interested in the housing market. We have focused in a use case considering real estate assets located in the Salamanca district in Madrid (Spain) and listed in the most relevant Spanish online site for home sales and rentals. The application is formally implemented as a regression problem that tries to estimate the market price of a house given features retrieved from public online listings. For building this application, we have performed a feature engineering stage in order to discover relevant features that allows for attaining a high predictive performance. Several machine learning algorithms have been tested, including regression trees, k-nearest neighbors, support vector machines and neural networks, identifying advantages and handicaps of each of them.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, 5 table

Review of Nature-Inspired Forecast Combination Techniques

Effective and efficient planning in various areas can be significantly supported by forecasting a variable like an economy growth rate or product demand numbers for a future point in time. More than one forecast for the same variable is often available, leading to the question whether one should choose one of the single models or combine several of them to obtain a forecast with improved accuracy. In the almost 40 years of research in the area of forecast combination, an impressive amount of work has been done. This paper reviews forecast combination techniques that are nonlinear and have in some way been inspired by nature