Probabilistic Forecast Reconciliation under the Gaussian Framework
证明当非协调预测分布为联合高斯时，MinT方法能最小化层次结构的对数评分，且其边际预测密度的对数评分优于OLS，并通过模拟和澳大利亚国内旅游数据验证了协方差矩阵估计的重要性。
Forecast reconciliation of multivariate time series maps a set of incoherent forecasts into coherent forecasts to satisfy a given set of linear constraints. Available methods in the literature either follow a projection matrix-based approach or an empirical copula-based reordering approach to revise the incoherent future sample paths to obtain reconciled probabilistic forecasts. The projection matrices are estimated either by optimizing a scoring rule such as energy or variogram score or simply using a projection matrix derived for point forecast reconciliation. This article proves that (a) if the incoherent predictive distribution is jointly Gaussian, then MinT (minimum trace) minimizes the logarithmic scoring rule for the hierarchy; and (b) the logarithmic score of MinT for each marginal predictive density is smaller than that of OLS (ordinary least squares). We illustrate these theoretical results using a set of simulation studies and the Australian domestic tourism dataset. The estimation of MinT needs to estimate the covariance matrix of the base forecast errors. We have evaluated the performance using the sample covariance matrix and shrinkage estimator. It was observed that the theoretical properties noted above are greatly impacted by the covariance matrix used and highlighted the importance of estimating it reliably, especially with high dimensional data.