Fix the runaway forecasts: refits accumulated, and annual terms fitted too early

Reported from a real station after 1.5 days: a six hour temperature forecast of
53 C in a 24 C room, and 9 C at one day, both carrying a plus or minus of 0.43.
Confidently wrong is the one failure this project is supposed to refuse.

Root cause. fit() replayed history into the live RLS on every retrain tick and
never reset, so 453 grid rows had produced 64,676 updates in a day and a half.
RLS with forgetting reads every update as fresh evidence, so the model believed
it had a hundred times the data it had: P collapsed, in-sample error looked
excellent, and the weights drifted without bound in directions the data never
excited. Measured: cond(P) 3.1e9 and ||theta|| 1680 against a median |theta| of
1.67. A refit now starts from the prior, which makes retraining idempotent.
Across 25 refits on the real data ||theta|| holds at 11.35, drifting 0.03, where
before it grew without limit.

The two largest weights were sin_doy and cos_doy at +1174 and +1191. Annual
harmonics were in the design matrix from the first sample, where they are
near-constant, near-collinear with each other and with the bias, and a
rank-deficient regressor is what RLS answers with enormous cancelling weights.
They are now held at zero until the record spans the same 120 days the
climatology fit already requires, because a day and a half of data says nothing
whatsoever about the season.

Also raised the standardiser's variance floor from 1e-8, which only caught a
bit-exactly constant column, to 1e-3. A feature that merely barely moves was
being divided by its own noise.

The conformal calibrators and Hedge weights are deliberately not reset by a
refit: those are earned from scored forecasts, not from this regression.

Backtest unchanged within noise, coverage still 89 to 91 across all 18 heads.
Four regression tests added, including that refitting the same history twice
must give the same model.
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-17 08:15:45 +01:00
parent bd233d7b27
commit 485affe956
6 changed files with 150 additions and 6 deletions
+91
View File
@@ -149,3 +149,94 @@ def test_zambretti_rain_prior_rises_with_z():
settled = zambretti(1035.0, 1.5, 6)
stormy = zambretti(960.0, -2.5, 6)
assert stormy["prior_rain_prob"] > settled["prior_rain_prob"]
# ---------------------------------------------------------------- refit safety
def test_rls_reset_returns_to_the_prior():
m = RecursiveLeastSquares(n_features=5, forgetting=0.999, delta=100.0)
rng = np.random.default_rng(9)
for _ in range(500):
m.update(rng.normal(size=5), float(rng.normal()))
assert m.n_updates == 500
m.reset()
assert m.n_updates == 0
assert np.allclose(m.theta, 0.0)
assert np.allclose(m.P, np.eye(5) * 100.0)
def test_rls_delta_survives_serialisation():
"""A refit after a restart must return to the same prior it started from."""
m = RecursiveLeastSquares(n_features=4, forgetting=0.99, delta=100.0)
m.update(np.ones(4), 1.0)
back = RecursiveLeastSquares.from_dict(m.to_dict())
back.reset()
assert np.allclose(back.P, np.eye(4) * 100.0), "reload lost the prior"
def test_repeated_refits_do_not_accumulate():
"""Refitting the same history must be idempotent, not cumulative.
This is the bug that put a 53 C six-hour forecast on a real station in a
24 C room. fit() replayed history into a live filter on every retrain tick
and never reset, so 453 grid rows had produced 64,676 updates in a day and a
half. RLS with forgetting reads each update as fresh evidence, so P
collapsed and the weights drifted without bound in the directions the data
never excited.
"""
from ashvale.config import CONFIG
from ashvale.models.nowcast import NowcastEnsemble
rng = np.random.default_rng(3)
n = 400
g = CONFIG.model.grid_s
ts = np.arange(n) * g + 1.7554e9
cols = {
"temperature": 22 + 2 * np.sin(np.arange(n) / 40.0) + 0.2 * rng.normal(size=n),
"humidity": 50 + 5 * np.cos(np.arange(n) / 33.0),
"pressure": 1013 + np.sin(np.arange(n) / 77.0),
"lux": np.clip(300 * np.sin(np.arange(n) / 120.0), 0, None),
}
X = rng.normal(size=(n, 33))
X[:, 0] = 1.0
valid = np.ones(n, dtype=bool)
ens = NowcastEnsemble(CONFIG.model.targets, CONFIG.model.horizons_s, CONFIG.model)
head = ens.heads[("temperature", 21600)]
ens.fit(X, valid, cols, None, ts)
first_norm = float(np.linalg.norm(head.model.theta))
first_updates = head.model.n_updates
for _ in range(15):
ens.fit(X, valid, cols, None, ts)
assert head.model.n_updates == first_updates, "updates accumulated across refits"
assert float(np.linalg.norm(head.model.theta)) == pytest.approx(first_norm, rel=0.05)
def test_annual_harmonics_are_zero_until_the_record_spans_a_season():
"""Two near-constant, near-collinear columns are a rank-deficient regressor.
Left on from day one, sin_doy and cos_doy carried +1174 and +1191 on a real
station whose median weight was 1.67. Zero is the honest value: a day and a
half of data says nothing whatsoever about the season.
"""
from ashvale.features import FEATURE_NAMES, build_features
n = 450
ts = np.arange(n) * 300.0 + 1.7554e9 # about 1.5 days
t = 22 + 2 * np.sin(np.arange(n) / 40.0)
h = 50 + 5 * np.cos(np.arange(n) / 33.0)
p = 1013 + np.sin(np.arange(n) / 77.0)
lux = np.clip(300 * np.sin(np.arange(n) / 120.0), 0, None)
si, ci = FEATURE_NAMES.index("sin_doy"), FEATURE_NAMES.index("cos_doy")
X, _ = build_features(ts, t, h, p, lux, 300, 52.2, 0.12, min_days_annual=120.0)
assert np.all(X[:, si] == 0.0) and np.all(X[:, ci] == 0.0)
# A record that does span the year keeps them.
ts_long = np.arange(n) * (200 * 86400.0 / n) + 1.7554e9
X2, _ = build_features(ts_long, t, h, p, lux, 300, 52.2, 0.12, min_days_annual=120.0)
assert X2[:, si].std() > 0.1, "annual terms should return once the record is long enough"