arXiv Machine Learning

Evaluation Choices Decide the Forecasting Leaderboard: Evidence from a Production Marketplace Panel

The paper demonstrates that the outcome of a forecasting leaderboard is largely determined by the evaluator’s design choices rather than the models themselves. By fixing the data, horizon, and period, the authors varied three key evaluation decisions—unit of analysis, error pooling, and scoring metric—and showed that each can reverse or eliminate the apparent superiority of any forecasting method. The study also evaluates the practical impact of these choices on a deployed system, revealing that the selection rule captures a significant portion of the potential performance gain, and confirms the findings on an external public dataset.

arXiv AI
Aug 17

Forecast Collapse in Time-Series Foundation Models

arXiv:2608. 14106v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: When forecasting hourly returns for 1,000 US equities, we observe an unexpected phenomenon: predictions become nearly flat and show poor stock ranking, as measured by cross-sectional correlation.

By Shu Wan, Miles Ma, Hank Zhu, Guangqi Liu, Stephen Wang, Qingsong Wen, Huan Liu
arXiv Machine Learning
4d ago

Global tree forecasters collapse at the hierarchical aggregate: a five-panel failure characterization

The paper reports a previously undocumented failure of global gradient‑boosted tree forecasters when applied to hierarchical aggregates. Training a single tree on individual series causes the model to predict a constant outside its training range, leading to severe under‑prediction of the total (30–50× in production and up to 496× in a public M5 reconstruction). The authors characterize this collapse across five datasets, three tree libraries, and multiple training seeds, and demonstrate that simple preprocessing steps—per‑series scaling, weighted aggregate‑level training, or seasonal differencing—can prevent it.

By Md Rezwanul Islam, Wael Mohammed
arXiv Machine Learning
3d ago

Downside-Controlled Online Forecast Combination under Delayed and Revised Outcomes

The paper proposes a method for controlling downside risk when adjusting forecasts from frozen models, such as foundation models, by combining a static corrector and an online corrector on the simplex. Using only post‑horizon losses, the approach achieves minimal deterioration (0.15%) and up to 11.5% gains across 28 forecast pairs, and consistently reduces mean MSE in day‑ahead load forecasts for seven European bidding zones. The method’s applicability is bounded by three empirical conditions related to expert speed, stream length, and outcome alignment.

By Minkyoung Kim, Hyunjung Byun, Yohan Lee, Beakcheol Jang