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

Direct strategy

The direct strategy, also called the independent strategy, is a popular strategy in forecasting using ML. This involves forecasting each horizon independently of each other. Let’s look at the diagram first:

Figure 17.3 – Direct strategy for multi-step forecasting

Next, let’s discuss the regimes in detail.

Training regime

Under the direct strategy, we train different models, which take in the same window function but are trained to predict different timesteps in the forecast horizon. Therefore, we are learning a separate set of parameters, one for each timestep in the horizon, such that all the models combined learn a direct and independent mapping from the window, , to the forecast horizon, .

This strategy has gained ground along with the popularity of ML-based time series forecasting. From the ML context, we can practically implement it in two ways:

  • Shifting targets – Each model in the horizon is...