A method for detecting changes in long time series
TN (United States) Oak Ridge National Lab., D Downing, USDOE, Washington, DC (United States), William F. Lawkins, M Morris, G Ostrouchov · 1995
Modern scientific activities, both physical and computational, can result in time series of many thousands or even millions of data values. Here the authors describe a statistically motivated algorithm for quick screening of very long time series data for the presence of potentially interesting but arbitrary changes. The basic data model is a stationary Gaussian stochastic process, and the approach to detecting a change is the comparison of two predictions of the series at a time point or contiguous collection of time points. One prediction is a ``forecast``, i.e. based on data from earlier times, while the other a ``backcast``, i.e. based on data from later times. The statistic is the absolute value of the log-likelihood ratio for these two predictions, evaluated at the observed data. A conservative procedure is suggested for specifying critical values for the statistic under the null hypothesis of ``no change``.