Book Image

Modern Time Series Forecasting with Python

By : Manu Joseph
5 (1)
Book Image

Modern Time Series Forecasting with Python

5 (1)
By: Manu Joseph

Overview of this book

We live in a serendipitous era where the explosion in the quantum of data collected and a renewed interest in data-driven techniques such as machine learning (ML), has changed the landscape of analytics, and with it, time series forecasting. This book, filled with industry-tested tips and tricks, takes you beyond commonly used classical statistical methods such as ARIMA and introduces to you the latest techniques from the world of ML. This is a comprehensive guide to analyzing, visualizing, and creating state-of-the-art forecasting systems, complete with common topics such as ML and deep learning (DL) as well as rarely touched-upon topics such as global forecasting models, cross-validation strategies, and forecast metrics. You’ll begin by exploring the basics of data handling, data visualization, and classical statistical methods before moving on to ML and DL models for time series forecasting. This book takes you on a hands-on journey in which you’ll develop state-of-the-art ML (linear regression to gradient-boosted trees) and DL (feed-forward neural networks, LSTMs, and transformers) models on a real-world dataset along with exploring practical topics such as interpretability. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to build world-class time series forecasting systems and tackle problems in the real world.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Getting Familiar with Time Series
6
Part 2 – Machine Learning for Time Series
13
Part 3 – Deep Learning for Time Series
20
Part 4 – Mechanics of Forecasting

Components of a deep learning system

Let us recall Yann LeCun’s definition of deep learning:

“Deep learning is a methodology: building a model by assembling parameterized modules into (possibly dynamic) graphs and optimizing it with gradient-based methods.”

The core idea here is that deep learning is an extremely modular system. Deep learning is not just one model, but rather a language to express any model in terms of a few parametrized modules with these specific properties:

  • It should be able to produce an output from a given input through a series of computations.
  • If the desired output is given, they should be able to pass on information to its inputs on how to change, to arrive at the desired output. For instance, if the output is lower than what is desired, the module should be able to tell its inputs to change in some direction so that the output becomes closer to the desired one.

The more mathematically inclined may have figured...