Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2020
Abstract
We introduce a qualitative, shape-based, timescale-independent time-domain transform used to extract local dynamics from sociotechnical time series—termed the Discrete Shocklet Transform (DST)—and an associated similarity search routine, the Shocklet Transform And Ranking (STAR) algorithm, that indicates time windows during which panels of time series display qualitatively-similar anomalous behavior. After distinguishing our algorithms from other methods used in anomaly detection and time series similarity search, such as the matrix profile, seasonal-hybrid ESD, and discrete wavelet transform-based procedures, we demonstrate the DST’s ability to identify mechanism-driven dynamics at a wide range of timescales and its relative insensitivity to functional parameterization. As an application, we analyze a sociotechnical data source (usage frequencies for a subset of words on Twitter) and highlight our algorithms’ utility by using them to extract both a typology of mechanistic local dynamics and a data-driven narrative of socially-important events as perceived by English-language Twitter.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights Information
© 2020, The Author(s).
Recommended Citation
Dewhurst DR, Alshaabi T, Kiley D, Arnold MV, Minot JR, Danforth CM, Dodds PS. The shocklet transform: a decomposition method for the identification of local, mechanism-driven dynamics in sociotechnical time series. EPJ Data Science. 2020 Dec 1;9(1):3.
DOI
10.1140/epjds/s13688-020-0220-x