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

Probabilistic forecasting

So far, we have been talking about the forecast as a single number. We have been projecting our DL models to a single dimension and training the model using a loss such as mean squared loss. This paradigm is what we call a point forecast. A probabilistic forecast is when the forecast, instead of having a single-point prediction, captures the uncertainty of that forecast as well. This means that the model doesn’t output a single number, but an output that reflects the probabilities associated with all possible future outcomes.

In the econometrics and classical time series world, the prediction intervals were already baked into the formulation. The statistical grounding of those methods made sure that the output of those models was readily interpreted in a probabilistic way as well (so long as you could satisfy the assumptions that were stipulated by those models). But in the modern machine/DL world, probabilistic forecasting is not an afterthought...