Robust methods similar to exponential smoothing are suggested in this paper. First previous results for exponential smoothing in L1
are generalized using the regression quantiles, including a generalization to more parameters. Then a method based on the classical sign test is introduced that should deal not only with outliers but also with level shifts, including a detection of change points. Properties of various approaches are investigated by means of a simulation study. A real data example is used as an illustration.
Recursive time series methods are very popular due to their numerical simplicity. Their theoretical background is usually based on Kalman filtering in state space models (mostly in dynamic linear systems). However, in time series practice one must face frequently to outlying values (outliers), which require applying special methods of robust statistics. In the paper a simple robustification of Kalman filter is suggested using a simple truncation of the recursive residuals. Then this concept is applied mainly to various types of exponential smoothing (recursive estimation in Box-Jenkins models with outliers is also mentioned). The methods are demonstrated using simulated data.
The paper suggests a generalization of widely used Holt-Winters smoothing and forecasting method for seasonal time series. The general concept of seasonality modeling is introduced both for the additive and multiplicative case. Several special cases are discussed, including a linear interpolation of seasonal indices and a usage of trigonometric functions. Both methods are fully applicable for time series with irregularly observed data (just the special case of missing observations was covered up to now). Moreover, they sometimes outperform the classical Holt-Winters method even for regular time series. A simulation study and real data examples compare the suggested methods with the classical one.