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      "name": "Description",
      "content": "<p>Remember, the competition deadline is the 10th of February. Participants must write a IEEE pdf 6 pages paper explaining the system designed,&nbsp; attach the excel with the forecast of each time series and send it to\r\n<a href=\"mailto:jperalta@inf.uc3m.es\">jperalta@inf.uc3m.es</a>.</p>\r\n<p>On the other hand, EAIS special session submission is the 15th of February. Participants can go to easychair submission (<a class=\"x_moz-txt-link-freetext\" href=\"https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=cifts2012\">https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=cifts2012</a>)\r\n and submit the same pdf document used for the competition as a contribution paper.</p>\r\n<p>For more information go to <span style=\"font-size:small\"><a title=\"First International Time Series Forecasting Competition\" href=\"http://www.caos.inf.uc3m.es/%7Ejperalta/ICTSF/\" target=\"_blank\">http://www.caos.inf.uc3m.es/~jperalta/ICTSF/</a></span> or email\r\n<a href=\"mailto:jperalta@inf.uc3m.es\">jperalta@inf.uc3m.es</a>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The International Competition of Time Series Forecasting is a forecasting competition which aims to encourage the development of new models to evaluate the accuracy of computational intelligence (CI) methods in time series forecasting with multiple frequencies.&nbsp;The\r\n contestants will use a unique&nbsp; consistent methodology for all time series.</p>\r\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\" style=\"font-size:small\">Forecast a dataset of 8 time series from a web bookshop data as accurately as possible, using methods from computational intelligence and applying a consistent methodology. The data consists of 8 time series with\r\n different time frequencies, that could include yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily and hourly data.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:small\">The prediction competition is open to all methods of computational intelligence, incl. feed-forward and recurrent neural networks, fuzzy predictors, evolutionary &amp; genetic algorithms, decision &amp; regression tress, support vector\r\n regression, hybrid approaches etc. used in all areas of forecasting, prediction &amp; time series analysis, etc.</span></p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n<span style=\"font-size:small\">You will be able to find in data an example_submission.csv file. &nbsp;It currently contains the last observed value for each time series as the prediction for each of the remaining values, update this value with your own predictions\r\n and submit it. &nbsp;<br>\r\n</span></p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n<span style=\"font-size:small\">To participate, first send an email to <a href=\"mailto:jperalta@inf.uc3m.es?subject=Doubt%20about%20ICTSF\">\r\njperalta@inf.uc3m.es</a> to confirm you are interested in participating in this competition.</span></p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n<span style=\"font-size:small\">All submissions will be invited to participate into\r\n<a title=\"EAIS 2012\" href=\"http://www.uc3m.es/portal/page/portal/congresos_jornadas/home_cfp_eais\" target=\"_blank\">\r\nIEEE-EAIS 2012</a> conference, in the special session titled <strong>&quot;<a title=\"Easychair submission\" href=\"https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=cifts2012\" target=\"_blank\">Computational Intelligence applied to Forecast Time Series</a>&quot;</strong>.\r\n For more information contact <a title=\"jperalta@inf.uc3m.es\" href=\"mailto:jperalta@inf.uc3m.es\">\r\njperalta@inf.uc3m.es</a></span></p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0pt; padding:0pt\">\r\n<span style=\"font-size:small\">For further information go to: <a title=\"First International Time Series Forecasting Competition\" href=\"http://www.caos.inf.uc3m.es/%7Ejperalta/ICTSF/\" target=\"_blank\">\r\nhttp://www.caos.inf.uc3m.es/~jperalta/ICTSF/</a></span></p>",
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      "name": "Evaluation",
      "content": "<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nThe global performance of a forecasting model is evaluated by an error measure. Historically, Mean Absolute Error (MAE) or (Root) Mean Squared Error ((R)MSE) are very popular error measures. However, Mean Square Error is too sensitive to outliers [1] and furthermore,\r\n both (R)MSE and MAE are scale-dependent measures and hence, it can be hardly used for a comparison across more time series since every single time series has a different impact on the overall results [2]. For example, it has been shown that five of the 1001\r\n series from the M-competition dominated the RMSE ranking of the forecasting methods and the remaining 996 series had only little impact on the ranking [1].</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nSymmetric Mean Absolute Percentage Error (SMAPE) [3]:</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\n&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\n<img src=\"http://www.caos.inf.uc3m.es/%7Ejperalta/ICTSF/images/Evaluation.PNG\" alt=\"\" width=\"467\" height=\"67\" border=\"0\"></p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\n&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nwhere e<sub>t</sub> = y<sub>t</sub>-F<sub>t</sub> for t = T &#43;1, ..., T &#43;h, it belongs to scale independent error measures, thus can be more easily used to compare methods across different time series. Although the SMAPE was originally proposed in [4] in a different\r\n form, formula (10) adopts the variant used in [5] since it does not lead to negative values (ranging from 0% to 200%).</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nFor the sake of correct evaluation, we choose <strong>SMAPE</strong> to measure the errors of the competition.</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\n&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\n<strong><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Selected references</span></strong></p>\r\n<ol>\r\n<li>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nJ.S. Armstrong, F. Collopy, Error measures for generalizing about forecasting methods: Empirical comparisons, International Journal of Forecasting 8 (1992) 69-80.</p>\r\n</li><li>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nJ.S. Armstrong, Evaluating methods, in: J.S. Armstrong (Eds.), Principles of Forecasting: A handbook for reasearchers and practitioners, Chap. 14, Kluwer, Boston/Dordrecht/London, 2001, pp. 443-473.</p>\r\n</li><li>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nR. J. Hyndman, A. Koehler, Another look at measures of forecast accuracy, International Journal of Forecasting 22(4) (2006) 679-688.</p>\r\n</li><li>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nJ.S. Armstrong, Long-range forecasting, Wiley New York ETC., 1985.</p>\r\n</li><li>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px; color:#333333; margin:0pt; padding:0pt; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">\r\nR. Andrawis, A. Atiya, A new Bayesian formulation for Holt's exponential smoothing, Journal of Forecasting 28(3) (2009) 218-234.</p>\r\n</li></ol>",
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      "name": "SubmissionInstructions",
      "content": "<p>In Data folder participants will be able to see different files:</p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>TRAIN_CSV_ICTSF_Datasets.csv: This file contains all the known Data values so participants can train their models or systems to try to improve them and make them as accurately as possible (time_series_id,time_point,value).\r\n</li><li>number_of_predictions.csv: This file specify the number of future unkown values that have to be forecasted for each time series (time_series_id,number_of_predictions).\r\n</li><li>sample_entry.csv: Is an example file of how a submission should be done. As you will be able to see the forecasted values are the same known last value for each time series from the&nbsp;TRAIN_CSV_ICTSF_Datasets.csv file.\r\n</li></ul>\r\n<p>To carry out a submission, participants just have to open sample_entry.csv file, change the last column for the values they obtain as prediction for each time series, go to Submission folder and see how good your system is.</p>\r\n<p>Careful!!, you will be able to check the accuracy of your system only once per day. GOOD LUCK!!</p>",
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    {
      "name": "Rules",
      "content": "\r\n\t<!-- Begin Base Rules -->\r\n    <h3>One account per participant</h3>\r\n    <p>You cannot sign up to Kaggle from multiple accounts and therefore you cannot submit from multiple accounts.</p>\r\n    <h3>No private sharing outside teams</h3>\r\n    <p>\r\n        Privately sharing code or data outside of teams is not permitted.\r\n        It's okay to share code if made available to all participants on the forums.\r\n    </p>\r\n    <h3>Team Mergers</h3>\r\n    <p>\r\n        Team mergers are allowed and can be performed by the team leader. In order to merge, the combined team must have a total submission count less than or equal to the maximum allowed as of the merge date. The maximum allowed is the number of submissions per day multiplied by the number of days the competition has been running.<br/>\r\n    </p>\r\n\r\n    <h3>Team Limits</h3>\r\n    <p>There is no maximum team size.</p>\r\n    <h3>Submission Limits</h3>\r\n    <p>You may submit a maximum of 1 entries per day.</p>\r\n    <p>You may select up to 5 final submissions for judging.</p>\r\n    <h3>Competition Timeline</h3>\r\n    <p>Start Date: <strong>11/21/2011 1:05 PM UTC</strong></p>\r\n    <p>Merger Deadline: <strong>None</strong></p>\r\n    <p>Entry Deadline: <strong>None</strong></p>\r\n    <p>End Date: <strong>2/10/2012 11:59 PM UTC</strong></p>\r\n\t<!-- End Base Rules -->\r\n",
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