Abstract
We consider the task of interpolating and forecasting a time series in the presence of noise and missing data. As the main contribution of this work, we introduce an algorithm that transforms the observed time series into a matrix, utilizes singular value thresholding to simultaneously recover missing values and de-noise observed entries, and performs linear regression to make predictions. We argue that this method provides meaningful imputation and forecasting for a large class of models: finite sum of harmonics (which approximate stationary processes), non-stationary sub-linear trends, Linear-Time-Invariant (LTI) systems, and their additive mixtures. In general, our algorithm recovers the hidden state of dynamics based on its noisy observations, like that of a Hidden Markov Model (HMM), provided the dynamics obey the above stated models. As an important application, it provides a robust algorithm for "synthetic control'' for causal inference.