pid: Conformal PID control method

In conformalForecast: Conformal Prediction Methods for Multistep-Ahead Time Series Forecasting

Conformal PID control method

Description

Compute prediction intervals and other information by applying the conformal PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) control method.

Usage

pid(
  object,
  alpha = 1 - 0.01 * object$level,
  symmetric = FALSE,
  ncal = 10,
  rolling = FALSE,
  integrate = TRUE,
  scorecast = !symmetric,
  scorecastfun = NULL,
  lr = 0.1,
  Tg = NROW(object$ERROR),
  delta = 0.01,
  Csat = NULL,
  KI = max(abs(object$ERROR), na.rm = TRUE),
  update = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

object	An object of class "cvforecast". It must have an argument x for the original univariate time series, an argument MEAN for the point forecasts and ERROR for the forecast errors on the validation set. See the results of a call to cvforecast.
alpha	A numeric vector of significance levels to achieve a desired coverage level 1-\alpha. Defaults to 1 - 0.01 * object$level, the levels used in object.
symmetric	If TRUE, symmetric nonconformity scores (i.e. |e_{t+h|t}|) are used. If FALSE, asymmetric nonconformity scores (i.e. e_{t+h|t}) are used, and then upper bounds and lower bounds are produced separately. Defaults to FALSE.
ncal	Length of the burn-in period for training the scorecaster. If rolling = TRUE, it is also used as the length of the trailing windows for the learning rate calculation and of the windows for the calibration set. If rolling = FALSE, it is used as the initial period of the calibration sets and of the trailing windows for the learning rate calculation. Defaults to 10.
rolling	If TRUE, a rolling window strategy will be adopted to form the trailing window for the learning rate calculation and the calibration set for the scorecaster if applicable. Otherwise, an expanding window strategy will be used. Defaults to FALSE.
integrate	If TRUE, error integration will be included in the update process. Defaults to TRUE.
scorecast	If TRUE, scorecasting will be included in the update process, and scorecastfun should be given. Defaults to !symmetric.
scorecastfun	A scorecaster function to return an object of class forecast. Its first argument must be a univariate time series, and it must have an argument h for the forecast horizon. Defaults to NULL, which is only allowed when scorecast = FALSE.
lr	A positive initial learning rate used for quantile tracking. Defaults to 0.1.
Tg	The time that is set to achieve the target absolute coverage guarantee before this. It must be greater than 1 when Csat is not supplied. Defaults to NROW(object$ERROR), the number of cross-validation periods in object.
delta	A number in (0, 1). The target absolute coverage guarantee is set to 1-\alpha-\delta. Defaults to 0.01.
Csat	A positive constant ensuring that by time Tg, an absolute guarantee is of at least 1-\alpha-\delta coverage. Defaults to NULL, in which case it is derived from Tg and delta as 2 / pi * (ceiling(log(Tg) * delta) - 1 / log(Tg)).
KI	A non-negative constant to place the integrator on the same scale as the scores. Defaults to max(abs(object$ERROR), na.rm = TRUE), the largest absolute forecast error in object.
update	If TRUE, object already holds the results of a previous call and only the newly added time steps are computed; the prediction intervals produced earlier are carried over unchanged. Set by update.cpforecast and not normally set by hand. Defaults to FALSE.
...	Other arguments are passed to the scorecastfun function.

Details

The PID method combines three modules to make the final iteration:

q_{t+h|t}=\underbrace{q_{t+h-1|t-1} + \eta(\mathrm{err}_{t|t-h}-\alpha)}_{\mathrm{P}}+\underbrace{r_t\left(\sum_{i=1}^t\left(\mathrm{err}_{i|i-h}-\alpha\right)\right)}_{\mathrm{I}}+\underbrace{\hat{s}_{t+h|t}}_{\mathrm{D}}

for each individual forecast horizon h, respectively, where

• Quantile tracking part (P) is q_{t+h-1|t-1} + \eta(\mathrm{err}_{t|t-h}-\alpha), where q_{1+h|1} is set to 0 without a loss of generality, \mathrm{err}_{t|t-h}=1 if s_{t|t-h}>q_{t|t-h}, and \mathrm{err}_{t|t-h}=0 if s_{t|t-h} \leq q_{t|t-h}.

• Error integration part (I) is r_t\left(\sum_{i=1}^t\left(\mathrm{err}_{i|i-h}-\alpha\right)\right). Here we use a nonlinear saturation function r_t(x)=K_{\mathrm{I}} \tan \left(x \log (t) /\left(t C_{\text {sat }}\right)\right), where we set \tan (x)=\operatorname{sign}(x) \cdot \infty for x \notin[-\pi / 2, \pi / 2], and C_{\text {sat }}, K_{\mathrm{I}}>0 are constants that we choose heuristically.

• Scorecasting part (D) is \hat{s}_{t+h|t}, the forecast generated by training a scorecaster based on the nonconformity scores available at time t.

Value

A list of class c("pid", "cpforecast", "cvforecast", "forecast") with the following components:

x	The original time series.
series	The name of the series x.
xreg	Exogenous predictor variables used, if applicable.
method	A character string "pid".
cp_times	An integer vector giving the number of conformal predictions performed in cross-validation for each forecast horizon.
MEAN	Point forecasts as a multivariate time series, where the hth column holds the point forecasts for forecast horizon h. The time index corresponds to the period for which the forecast is produced.
ERROR	Forecast errors given by e_{t+h|t} = y_{t+h}-\hat{y}_{t+h|t}.
LOWER	A list containing lower bounds for prediction intervals for each level. Each element within the list will be a multivariate time series with the same dimensional characteristics as MEAN.
UPPER	A list containing upper bounds for prediction intervals for each level. Each element within the list will be a multivariate time series with the same dimensional characteristics as MEAN.
level	The confidence values associated with the prediction intervals.
call	The matched call.
model	A list containing information about the conformal prediction model: the resolved arguments in model$args, the call and the arguments of the underlying cross-validation in model$cvforecast, the learning rates actually used in model$lr_update, and the recursion state needed to extend the results in model$state and model$t_last. The integrator and scorecaster series are returned in model$integrator and model$scorecaster when integrate and scorecast are TRUE; when symmetric = FALSE each of the two holds a lower and an upper element.

If mean is included in the object, the components mean, lower, and upper will also be returned, showing the information about the forecasts generated using all available observations.

References

Angelopoulos, A., Candes, E., and Tibshirani, R. J. (2023). "Conformal PID control for time series prediction", Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36, 23047–23074.

See Also

cvforecast to produce object, and update.cpforecast to extend the results with new observations.

Other conformal prediction methods: acmcp(), acp(), conformal(), scp()

Examples

# Simulate time series from an AR(2) model
library(forecast)
set.seed(1)
series <- arima.sim(n = 200, list(ar = c(0.8, -0.5)), sd = sqrt(1))

# Cross-validation forecasting
far2 <- function(x, h, level) {
  Arima(x, order = c(2, 0, 0)) |>
    forecast(h = h, level)
}
fc <- cvforecast(series, forecastfun = far2, h = 3, level = 95, window = 50)

# PID setup
Tg <- 200; delta <- 0.01
Csat <- 2 / pi * (ceiling(log(Tg) * delta) - 1 / log(Tg))
KI <- 2

# PID without scorecaster
pidfc_nsf <- pid(fc, ncal = 50, rolling = TRUE, scorecast = FALSE,
                 KI = KI, Csat = Csat)
print(pidfc_nsf)
summary(pidfc_nsf)

# PID with a Naive model for the scorecaster
naivefun <- function(x, h) {
  naive(x) |> forecast(h = h)
}
pidfc <- pid(fc, ncal = 50, rolling = TRUE, scorecastfun = naivefun,
             KI = KI, Csat = Csat)

conformalForecast documentation built on Oct. 15, 2026, 9:07 a.m.