A Network Science Approach to Granular Time Series Segmentation

Time series segmentation assigns a label to each part of a sequence. We formulate dense univariate segmentation as node classification on a graph whose nodes are the original time points. A local window provides node features without setting output granularity. We evaluate the approach on a TSSB-derived inductive benchmark built from disjoint UCR training and test instances. Under one fixed Graph Attention Network (GAT), visibility-based transformations achieve the highest mean ranks among eleven graph constructions. WDPVG, directed NVG, and weighted NVG form a statistically indistinguishable top group after Holm correction. On the 59-dataset Time Series Segmentation Benchmark, WDPVG+GAT reaches a weighted F1 of 0.916, below seq2point at 0.951 and statistically indistinguishable from same-feature MLP, random-forest, and 1-NN controls, because at this downsampled resolution each segment is short and the fixed 81-sample window already spans most of it. At native resolution, where each segment is longer than that window, WDPVG+GAT is less sensitive to feature-window width and remains above the same-feature MLP at every tested window. The graph's advantage over these point-wise classifiers comes from context beyond the local window, which the visibility graph's long-range edges can supply, rather than from better features within it. In a separate resolution sweep, it is statistically tied with a window-searched seq2point while using about 70× fewer parameters and 46× less measured peak memory, although seq2point moves ahead after downsampling. This identifies a practical operating regime for finely sampled series when model size and repeated window tuning matter.