This paper introduces a novel fuzzy clustering method for circular time series based on a new dependence measure that considers circular arcs. The algorithm groups series generated from similar stochastic processes and demonstrates computational efficiency. The method is applied to time series of wind direction in Saudi Arabia, showcasing its practical potential.
KAUST's Stochastic Numerics Research Group is developing methods for pricing European options. Their approach, detailed in an upcoming Journal of Computational Finance article, focuses on systematically tuning parameters to achieve accuracy while minimizing computational effort. The goal is to enable automated computation of fair prices for options contracts, similar to how insurance companies determine premiums. Why it matters: This research advances computational finance in the region, potentially improving risk management and investment strategies.
The paper introduces TimeHUT, a new method for learning time-series representations using hierarchical uniformity-tolerance balancing of contrastive representations. TimeHUT employs a hierarchical setup to learn both instance-wise and temporal information, along with a temperature scheduler to balance uniformity and tolerance. The method was evaluated on UCR, UAE, Yahoo, and KPI datasets, demonstrating superior performance in classification tasks and competitive results in anomaly detection.
The AraFinNLP 2024 shared task introduced two subtasks focused on Arabic financial NLP: multi-dialect intent detection and cross-dialect translation with intent preservation. It utilized the updated ArBanking77 dataset, containing 39k parallel queries in MSA and four dialects, labeled with 77 banking-related intents. 45 teams registered, with 11 participating in intent detection (achieving a top F1 score of 0.8773) and only 1 team attempting translation (achieving a BLEU score of 1.667). Why it matters: This initiative addresses the need for specialized Arabic NLP tools in the growing Arab financial sector, promoting advancements in areas like banking chatbots and machine translation.
This article discusses the application of uncertain time series (UTS) approach to manage and analyze big traffic data for high-resolution vehicular transportation services. The study addresses challenges such as data sparseness, decision-making among multiple UTSs, and future forecasting with spatio-temporal correlations. Jilin Hui, previously a Research Associate at the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence (UAE), is applying this approach to solve problems related to increased congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced air quality in urban environments. Why it matters: The application of AI techniques to traffic management could significantly improve urban mobility and environmental sustainability in the GCC region and beyond.
This paper introduces DaringFed, a novel dynamic Bayesian persuasion pricing mechanism for online federated learning (OFL) that addresses the challenge of two-sided incomplete information (TII) regarding resources. It formulates the interaction between the server and clients as a dynamic signaling and pricing allocation problem within a Bayesian persuasion game, demonstrating the existence of a unique Bayesian persuasion Nash equilibrium. Evaluations on real and synthetic datasets demonstrate that DaringFed optimizes accuracy and convergence speed and improves the server's utility.
A novel wind speed forecasting (WSF) framework is proposed combining Wavelet Packet Decomposition (WPD), Seasonal Adjustment Method (SAM), and Bidirectional Long Short-term Memory (BiLSTM). The SAM method eliminates the seasonal component of the decomposed subseries generated by WPD to reduce forecasting complexity. The model was tested on five years of hourly wind speed observations acquired from the Dumat Al-Jandal wind farm in Al-Jouf, Saudi Arabia, achieving high forecasting accuracy.