Statistical mechanics of time series
Countless natural and social multivariate systems are studied through sets of simultaneous and time-spaced measurements of the observables that drive their dynamics, i.e., through sets of time series. Typically, this is done via hypothesis testing: the statistical properties of the empirical time series are tested against those expected under a suitable null hypothesis. This is a very challenging task in complex interacting systems, where statistical stability is often poor due to lack of stationarity and ergodicity. Here, we describe an unsupervised, data-driven framework to perform hypothesis testing in such situations. This consists of a statistical mechanical theory - derived from first principles - for ensembles of time series designed to preserve, on average, some of the statistical properties observed on an empirical set of time series. We showcase its possible applications on a set of stock market returns from the NYSE.