Long-term time series prediction using OP-ELM.

In this paper, an Optimally Pruned Extreme Learning Machine (OP-ELM) is applied to the problem of long-term time series prediction. Three known strategies for the long-term time series prediction i.e. Recursive, Direct and DirRec are considered in combination with OP-ELM and compared with a baseline linear least squares model and Least-Squares Support Vector Machines (LS-SVM). Among these three strategies DirRec is the most time consuming and its usage with nonlinear models like LS-SVM, where several hyperparameters need to be adjusted, leads to relatively heavy computations. It is shown that OP-ELM, being also a nonlinear model, allows reasonable computational time for the DirRec strategy. In all our experiments, except one, OP-ELM with DirRec strategy outperforms the linear model with any strategy. In contrast to the proposed algorithm, LS-SVM behaves unstably without variable selection. It is also shown that there is no superior strategy for OP-ELM: any of three can be the best. In addition, the prediction accuracy of an ensemble of OP-ELM is studied and it is shown that averaging predictions of the ensemble can improve the accuracy (Mean Square Error) dramatically.

OP-ELM: optimally pruned extreme learning machine.

In this brief, the optimally pruned extreme learning machine (OP-ELM) methodology is presented. It is based on the original extreme learning machine (ELM) algorithm with additional steps to make it more robust and generic. The whole methodology is presented in detail and then applied to several regression and classification problems. Results for both computational time and accuracy (mean square error) are compared to the original ELM and to three other widely used methodologies: multilayer perceptron (MLP), support vector machine (SVM), and Gaussian process (GP). As the experiments for both regression and classification illustrate, the proposed OP-ELM methodology performs several orders of magnitude faster than the other algorithms used in this brief, except the original ELM. Despite the simplicity and fast performance, the OP-ELM is still able to maintain an accuracy that is comparable to the performance of the SVM. A toolbox for the OP-ELM is publicly available online.