EPOC: Endpoint-Preserving Online Correction With Compressed Residual State for Multi-Horizon Time Series Forecasting

Abstract

Completed forecasts provide residual feedback, but retaining full residual blocks increases auxiliary state. We propose Endpoint-Preserving Online Correction (EPOC) with a compressed residual state. It stores low-order discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients and the final value of the preceding residual block. Each channel shares the endpoint across component-wise online ridge regressions using current-forecast coefficients. We evaluate eight multivariate series, DLinear and PatchTST, three seeds, and two training variants: 96 matched fixed-base conditions at a 24-step horizon. EPOC achieves mean condition-wise reductions in mean squared error (MSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) of 15.40% and 9.35% from the uncorrected base, respectively, with a median of 6,352 B in retained auxiliary arrays. EPOC also outperforms the $δ$-Adapter, COSA, FAC, and OMPB in paired MSE on most conditions while retaining less state. Full ELF achieves the largest mean MSE reduction, 19.29%, but its median retained state is 474,048 B ($\times$75 relative to EPOC). Equal-size summary controls favor the endpoint by 1.65--2.20% in paired MSE; a coefficient-reconstructed endpoint yields similar accuracy to the observed endpoint, highlighting its role as a shared input. Increasing the retained DCT component count from 4 to 8 adds 1.00 percentage point of MSE reduction for 5,728 B. On jointly trained bases, EPOC lowers MSE by 16.69--20.15% relative to globally blended TEFL-style adapters applied to the same base. Code and numerical records are available at [https://github.com/keiotakmin/endpoint-preserving-residual-correction](https://github.com/keiotakmin/endpoint-preserving-residual-correction).