LSSVR ensemble learning with uncertain parameters for crude oil price forecasting

Least squares support vector regression (LSSVR) is an effective and competitive approach for crude oil price prediction, but its performance suffers from parameter sensitivity and long tuning time. This paper considers the user-defined parameters as uncertain (or random) factors to construct an LSSVR ensemble learning paradigm, by taking four major steps. First, probability distributions of the user-defined parameters in LSSVR are designed using grid method for low upper bound estimation (LUBE). Second, random sets of parameters are generated according to the designed probability distributions to formulate diverse individual LSSVR members. Third, each individual member is applied to individual prediction. Finally, all individual results are combined to the final output via ensemble weighted averaging, with probabilities measuring the corresponding weights. The computational experiment using the crude oil spot price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) verifies the effectiveness of the proposed LSSVR ensemble learning paradigm with uncertain parameters compared with some existing LSSVR variants (using other popular parameters selection algorithms), in terms of prediction accuracy and time-saving. (c) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.