While my Major in my MSc was Nuclear Physics, my two minor subjects were Pure and Applied Mathematics, yes I do use special mathematical approaches (you can call them "correlation transforms" or "neural net systems", or "Regression equations", a rose by any other name ....). The problem with the approach is that it has a number of time variable, and sometimes these need t be tweaked (using what we call "intuition"), but often enough, those turnips work fine.
Zeev