arXiv Machine Learning

Causal Analysis for Time Series Foundation Models

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 3

Probabilistic Low-Voltage Peak Load Forecasting with Time Series Foundation Models Evaluated on Application-Oriented Metrics

arXiv:2607. 01966v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Low-voltage load forecasting is an important component in current and future energy systems with a high degree of electrification and decentralized generation.

By Benedikt Kaas, Manuel Treutlein, Hannes Benedikt Gerber, Oliver Neumann, Cheewan Phatthanakhuha, Oliver Resch, Ralf Mikut, Veit Hagenmeyer
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

Foundations without Fundamentals: Zero-Shot Blind Spots in Time Series FMs

The paper introduces SimpleTimeBench, a diagnostic suite testing basic temporal primitives like monotonic trends, periodic signals, and leading indicator covariates. It finds that prominent multivariate Time Series Foundation Models (Chronos‑2, Moirai, and Toto) often produce suboptimal zero‑shot forecasts for these simple patterns, and that fine‑tuning can improve specific tasks while harming performance on other fundamentals. These failures persist in real‑world sensor forecasting, indicating that current TSFMs may lack the inductive biases needed to capture straightforward relationships, thereby limiting their practical reliability.

By Nafiseh Ghoroghchian, Haipeng Zhang, Shuyi Han, Alex Labach, George Stein
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 25

Time-Series Foundation Models That Understand Data Revisions

The paper introduces VINTAGE-TS, a revision‑aware time‑series foundation model that separates observation time from information‑availability time. It predicts both the next period’s first‑published value and the value available after a fixed delay, maintaining a joint distribution to capture their dependence and uncertainty. The authors provide a detailed evaluation protocol, software tools for validity‑interval reconstruction and delayed‑label filtering, and a synthetic demonstration with a 25‑configuration sensitivity suite to illustrate performance variability and the impact of hindsight contamination.

By Taimoor Ahmad
arXiv Machine Learning
2d ago

Beyond Model Ranking: Regime Diagnosis for Distributional-Statistical Misspecification in Industrial Time-Series Forecasting

The paper introduces a regime‑diagnosis framework for industrial time‑series forecasting, highlighting that canonical loss functions embed fixed statistical priors that are violated in real‑world demand regimes such as zero‑inflation, skewness, and high variability. It proposes the Regime‑wise Relative Bias Vector (RBV) as a metric‑agnostic diagnostic that decomposes bias into an intrinsic floor and an excess attributable to training. A large‑scale study across 13 loss objectives and 60,000+ series demonstrates that regime‑aware diagnosis distinguishes optimization‑from‑bias failures and that regime‑aware training can eliminate pooling‑induced bias that mere capacity scaling cannot.

By Pengyu Nie, Chenglang Xu, Yaoshi Chen, Chaogan Ren, Wei Hu, Chao Yang, Jiangong Zhang
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 21

Time-Aware Prior Fitted Networks for Zero-Shot Forecasting with Exogenous Variables

arXiv:2603. 15802v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In many time series forecasting settings, the target time series is accompanied by exogenous covariates, such as promotions and prices in retail demand; temperature in energy load; calendar and holiday indicators for traffic or sales; and grid load or fuel costs in electricity pricing.

By Andres Potapczynski, Ravi Kiran Selvam, Tatiana Konstantinova, Malcolm Wolff, Kin G. Olivares, Ruijun Ma, Michael W. Mahoney, Andrew Gordon Wilson, Boris N. Oreshkin, Dmitry Efimov