Data and dialogue: Dean's keynote highlights from Sydney and Auckland
Professor Li delivers the kickoff keynote “On Threshold Nonlinear Time Series with a Buffer Zone” at the Time Series and Forecasting Symposium held at the University of Sydney.
Professor Li, left, takes photo with winners of student poster presentation and student oral presentation at the closing ceremony of the Time Series and Forecasting Symposium organised by Business School of the University of Sydney. Third from left is Professor Timo Terasvirta from Aarhus University, second from right is Professor Roberto Reno from ESSEC Business School in France and first from right is Professor Boris Choy from the Business School, University of Sydney.
Professor Li Wai-keung, Dean of FLASS, delivered keynote speeches at two international conferences on time series, forecasting and mathematical modelling held at the Business School of the University of Sydney in Australia and Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand during an academic visit in November and December 2024. The two conferences covered a broad range of topics in business modelling, risk management and organisational decision-making.
At the 2024 Time Series and Forecasting Symposium held on 28 and 29 November, Professor Li delivered the overall keynote speech at the opening session. Aiming to promote time series analysis and forecasting in business and other areas, the 2024 symposium is the sixth annual research event of the Time Series and Forecasting Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School.
The symposium at the University of Sydney featured also student poster and three-mintue oral presentations across all areas related to time series and forecasting, including time series econometrics, volatility modelling and risk forecasting, risk assessment and management, high-dimensional modelling and forecasting, computational methods, robust inferences, machine learning, and deep learning.
Following this, Professor Li flew to Auckland to attend the Ninth AUT Mathematical Modelling and Analytics Symposium organised by the Mathematical Modelling and Analytics Research Centre (MMARC) and the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) on 3 and 4 December 2024. Professor Li was one of the keynote speakers at this two-day conference.
Professor Li together with Professor Philip Yu from the Department of Mathematics and Information Technology of EdUHK are among the first group of scholars to introduce a time series with a buffer (hysteretic) zone in the middle of the 2010s, which extends the classical nonlinear threshold time series by allowing the current time series structure to remain unchanged if its immediate past lies within a buffered region. Since its introduction, this model has found applications in many fields including exchange rates and environmental modelling. It has also been extended in various directions covering smooth transitions and non-stationarity structures.
“My two keynote talks titled ‘On Threshold Nonlinear Time Series with a Buffer Zone’ provided an updated review of developments in buffered time series models, including the most recent moving average version,” Professor Li stated. In his speeches, the renowned scholar in time series analysis illustrated how to apply the buffered time series model using real data.
