Tods

Abstract

1. Introduction

TODS is a full-stack automated machine learning system for outlier detection on multivariate time-series data. TODS provides exhaustive modules for building machine learning-based outlier detection systems, including: data processing, time series processing, feature analysis (extraction), detection algorithms, and reinforcement module. The functionalities provided via these modules include data preprocessing for general purposes, time series data smoothing/transformation, extracting features from time/frequency domains, various detection algorithms, and involving human expertise to calibrate the system. Three common outlier detection scenarios on time-series data can be performed: point-wise detection (time points as outliers), pattern-wise detection (subsequences as outliers), and system-wise detection (sets of time series as outliers), and a wide-range of corresponding algorithms are provided in TODS. This package is developed by DATA Lab @ Rice University.

2. Objective

TODS: An Automated Time-series Outlier Detection System

This project demonstrates how Python, Machine Learning can be applied to a real-world AI & Machine Learning problem.

4. Technology Stack

5. System Requirements

General requirements for this technology stack — check the README for exact versions.

• Python 3.8 or later
• pip / virtualenv for dependencies
• VS Code, PyCharm or Jupyter Notebook
• Git (to clone the repository)

6. Installation & Setup

git clone https://github.com/datamllab/tods.git
cd tods

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libyaml-dev build-essential libopenblas-dev libcap-dev ffmpeg

git clone https://github.com/datamllab/tods.git

cd tods
pip install -e .

Full setup instructions are in the project README.

7. Future Enhancements

Suggested extensions you can add to make this your own project.

• Deploy the model as a web app with Streamlit, Flask or FastAPI
• Compare against an additional model and report the metric difference
• Add explainability (SHAP / Grad-CAM)

8. Viva / Review Questions

Common questions examiners ask for projects in this domain.

1. What dataset does the project use and how was it pre-processed?
2. Which algorithm / model architecture is used and why was it chosen over alternatives?
3. How are training and testing data split, and how is overfitting avoided?
4. Which evaluation metrics (accuracy, precision, recall, F1) are reported and what do they mean here?
5. How would you deploy this model for real users?

9. Source Code & License

This project is developed by datamllab and published on GitHub under the Apache License 2.0. Please follow the license terms and credit the original author when you use or modify this code.