Multidimensional Prediction Models When the Resolution Context Changes


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Materials on this website are associated to the following paper:

Contents:



Introduction and Motivation

Most existing algorithms in machine learning only manipulate data at an individual level (flat data tables), not considering the case of multiple abstract levels for the given data set. However, in many applications, data contains structured information that is multidimensional (or multilevel) in nature, such as retailing, geographic, economic or scientific data. The multidimensional model is a widely extended conceptual model originated in the database literature that can be used to properly capture the multiresolutional character of many data sets. Multidimensional databases arrange data into fact tables and dimensions. A dimension is here understood as a particular variable that has predefined (and hopefully meaningful) levels of aggregation, with a hierarchical structure.

In this work, multidimensional data is systematically analysed at multiple granularities by applying aggregate and disaggregate operators (e.g., by the use of OLAP tools). For instance, in a supermarket we may want to predict sales of tomatoes for next week, but we may also be interested in predicting sales for all vegetables (higher up in the product hierarchy) for next Friday (lower down in the time dimension). While the domain and data are the same, the operating context is different. We explore several approaches for multidimensional data when predictions have to be made at different levels (or contexts) of aggregation. One method relies on the same resolution, another approach aggregates predictions bottom-up, a third approach disaggregates predictions top-down and a final technique corrects predictions using the relation between levels. We show how these strategies behave when the resolution context changes, using several machine learning techniques in four application domains.

Software (with a toy dataset) and sources for the Datasets used in this work

Any use of this software (even non-profit or academic uses) should be done only after contacting the authors first. We will most probably grant permission to use it freely and even point to newer versions if there are.


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