High-precision forecast using grey models

In recent years the grey theorem has been successfully used in many prediction applications. The proposed Markov-Fourier grey model prediction approach uses a grey model to predict roughly the next datum from a set of most recent data. Then, a Fourier series is used to fit the residual error produced by the grey model. With the Fourier series obtained, the error produced by the grey model in the next step can be estimated. Such a Fourier residual correction approach can have a good performance. However, this approach only uses the most recent data without considering those previous data. In this paper, we further propose to adopt the Markov forecasting method to act as a longterm residual correction scheme. By combining the short-term predicted value by a Fourier series and a long-term estimated error by the Markov forecasting method, our approach can predict the future more accurately. Three time series are used in our demonstration. They are a smooth functional curve, a curve for the stock market and the Mackey-Glass chaotic time series. The performance of our approach is compared with different prediction schemes, such as back-propagation neural networks and fuzzy models. All these methods are one-step-ahead forecasting. The simulation results show that our approach can predict the future more accurately and also use less computational time than other methods do.