An Application of GP-based Prediction Model to Sunspots

We have developed a method to build time series prediction models by Genetic Programming (GP). Our proposed CP includes two new techniques. One is the parameter optimization algorithm, and the other is the new mutation operator. In this paper, the sunspot prediction experiment by our proposed CP was performed. The sunspot prediction is good benchmark, because many researchers have predicted them with various kinds of models. We make three experiments. The first is to compare our proposed method with the conventional methods. The second is to investigate about the relation between a model-building period and prediction precision. In the first and the second experiments, the long-term data of annual sunspots are used. The third is to try the prediction using monthly sunspots. The annual sunspots are a mean of the monthly sunspots. The behaviors of the monthly sunspot cycles in tile annual sunspot data become invisible. In the long-term data of the monthly sunspots, the behavior appears and is complicated. We estimate that the monthly sunspot prediction is more difficult than the annual sunspot prediction. The usefulness of our method in time series prediction is verified by these experiments.