Change point analysis of imprecise time series

In this paper we describe how to conduct a change-point analysis when dealing with time series imprecisely or vaguely observed, i.e. time ordered observations whose values are not known exactly, such as interval or ordinal time series (imprecise time series). In order to treat such time series, we propose to employ a fuzzy approach i.e. data are parameterized in the form of fuzzy variables. Then, to detect the number and location of change points we employ a deviation measure for fuzzy variables in the framework of Atheoretical Regression Trees (ART). We present simulation results pertaining to the behavior of the proposed approach as well as two empirical applications to real imprecise time series. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.