Simple algorithm for online outlier detection of a generic time series

Question

I am working with a large amount of time series. These time series are basically network measurements coming every 10 minutes, and some of them are periodic (i.e. the bandwidth)

Answer 1

This is a big and complex subject, and the answer will depend on (a) how much effort you want to invest in this and (b) how effective you want your outlier detection to be. One possible approach is adaptive filtering, which is typically used for applications like noise cancelling headphones, etc. You have a filter which constantly adapts to the input signal, effectively matching its filter coefficients to a hypothetical short term model of the signal source, thereby reducing mean square error output. This then gives you a low level output signal (the residual error) except for when you get an outlier, which will result in a spike, which will be easy to detect (threshold). Read up on adaptive filtering, LMS filters, etc, if you're serious about this kind of technique.