Applying non-negative matrix factorization with covariates to multivariate time series data as a vector autoregression model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We propose a novel framework for analyzing multivariate time series (MTS) data by integrating non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) with vector autoregression (VAR). Termed NMF-VAR, this method models the coefficient matrix of NMF as a VAR process, enabling simultaneous extraction of latent components and temporal dependencies. Unlike standard VAR, which struggles with high dimensionality and lacks clarity, our method introduces a low-rank latent structure that reduces the number of parameters while retaining explanatory power. The proposed framework generalizes the standard VAR model to high-dimensional non-negative data, including the standard VAR as a special case. We formulate the estimation as a constrained optimization problem and present multiplicative update rules for NMF based on existing tri-factorization techniques. We evaluate the method on three real-world datasets: quarterly first-differenced macroeconomic indicators of Canada, monthly international airline passenger volumes, and daily COVID-19 infection counts across Japanese prefectures. The results demonstrate that NMF–VAR effectively captures meaningful patterns such as economic cycles, seasonal travel behavior, and regional epidemic trends. Moreover, the method yields a significant reduction in regression parameters, improving both scalability and model transparency. Overall, NMF–VAR provides an efficient and insightful tool for analyzing high-dimensional and large-scale time series data.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".