Book Image

Data Forecasting and Segmentation Using Microsoft Excel

By : Fernando Roque
Book Image

Data Forecasting and Segmentation Using Microsoft Excel

By: Fernando Roque

Overview of this book

Data Forecasting and Segmentation Using Microsoft Excel guides you through basic statistics to test whether your data can be used to perform regression predictions and time series forecasts. The exercises covered in this book use real-life data from Kaggle, such as demand for seasonal air tickets and credit card fraud detection. You’ll learn how to apply the grouping K-means algorithm, which helps you find segments of your data that are impossible to see with other analyses, such as business intelligence (BI) and pivot analysis. By analyzing groups returned by K-means, you’ll be able to detect outliers that could indicate possible fraud or a bad function in network packets. By the end of this Microsoft Excel book, you’ll be able to use the classification algorithm to group data with different variables. You’ll also be able to train linear and time series models to perform predictions and forecasts based on past data.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1 – An Introduction to Machine Learning Functions
5
Part 2 – Grouping Data to Find Segments and Outliers
10
Part 3 – Simple and Multiple Linear Regression Analysis
14
Part 4 – Predicting Values with Time Series

Understanding the influence of variables in linear regression

The goal of linear regression is to build a model useful to predict future values based on evidence in the present data. To achieve this objective, we have two types of variables:

  • The predictor variables determine the value of a variable for which we want to know the possible future values.
  • The result variable is affected by the predictor variables.

The model accuracy depends on the statistical relevance of the relationship between the variables. To test this relevance, we can probe the model's data relationships. Examples of probes include the following:

  • Coefficient of determination, or R-squared
  • Coefficient of correlation
  • t-statistics and p-value
  • f-statistics

The statistical tests are necessary to prove that the variables have a relationship that could be useful to build a predictor model. The four probes previously mentioned are used to test the alternate hypothesis...