The M A Process

Forecasting is required in many situations. Stocking an inventory may require forecasts of demand months in advance. Telecommunication routing requires traffic forecasts a few minutes ahead. Whatever the circumstances or time horizons involved, forecasting is an important aid in effective and efficient planning. This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to forecasting methods and presents enough information about each method for readers to use them sensibly.

Build predictive models from time-based patterns in your data. Master statistical models including new deep learning approaches for time series forecasting. In Time Series Forecasting in Python you will learn how to: Recognize a time series forecasting problem and build a performant predictive model Create univariate forecasting models that account for seasonal effects and external variables Build multivariate forecasting models to predict many time series at once Leverage large datasets by using deep learning for forecasting time series Automate the forecasting process Time Series Forecasting in Python teaches you to build powerful predictive models from time-based data. Every model you create is relevant, useful, and easy to implement with Python. You’ll explore interesting real-world datasets like Google’s daily stock price and economic data for the USA, quickly progressing from the basics to developing large-scale models that use deep learning tools like TensorFlow. About the technology You can predict the future—with a little help from Python, deep learning, and time series data! Time series forecasting is a technique for modeling time-centric data to identify upcoming events. New Python libraries and powerful deep learning tools make accurate time series forecasts easier than ever before. About the book Time Series Forecasting in Python teaches you how to get immediate, meaningful predictions from time-based data such as logs, customer analytics, and other event streams. In this accessible book, you’ll learn statistical and deep learning methods for time series forecasting, fully demonstrated with annotated Python code. Develop your skills with projects like predicting the future volume of drug prescriptions, and you’ll soon be ready to build your own accurate, insightful forecasts. What's inside Create models for seasonal effects and external variables Multivariate forecasting models to predict multiple time series Deep learning for large datasets Automate the forecasting process About the reader For data scientists familiar with Python and TensorFlow. About the author Marco Peixeiro is a seasoned data science instructor who has worked as a data scientist for one of Canada’s largest banks. Table of Contents PART 1 TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE 1 Understanding time series forecasting 2 A naive prediction of the future 3 Going on a random walk PART 2 FORECASTING WITH STATISTICAL MODELS 4 Modeling a moving average process 5 Modeling an autoregressive process 6 Modeling complex time series 7 Forecasting non-stationary time series 8 Accounting for seasonality 9 Adding external variables to our model 10 Forecasting multiple time series 11 Capstone: Forecasting the number of antidiabetic drug prescriptions in Australia PART 3 LARGE-SCALE FORECASTING WITH DEEP LEARNING 12 Introducing deep learning for time series forecasting 13 Data windowing and creating baselines for deep learning 14 Baby steps with deep learning 15 Remembering the past with LSTM 16 Filtering a time series with CNN 17 Using predictions to make more predictions 18 Capstone: Forecasting the electric power consumption of a household PART 4 AUTOMATING FORECASTING AT SCALE 19 Automating time series forecasting with Prophet 20 Capstone: Forecasting the monthly average retail price of steak in Canada 21 Going above and beyond

An authoritative, self-contained overview of time series analysis for students and researchers The past decade has brought dramatic changes in the way that researchers analyze economic and financial time series. This textbook synthesizes these advances and makes them accessible to first-year graduate students. James Hamilton provides comprehensive treatments of important innovations such as vector autoregressions, generalized method of moments, the economic and statistical consequences of unit roots, time-varying variances, and nonlinear time series models. In addition, he presents basic tools for analyzing dynamic systems—including linear representations, autocovariance generating functions, spectral analysis, and the Kalman filter—in a way that integrates economic theory with the practical difficulties of analyzing and interpreting real-world data. Time Series Analysis fills an important need for a textbook that integrates economic theory, econometrics, and new results. This invaluable book starts from first principles and should be readily accessible to any beginning graduate student, while it is also intended to serve as a reference book for researchers.

A comprehensive and self-contained introduction to Gaussian processes, which provide a principled, practical, probabilistic approach to learning in kernel machines. Gaussian processes (GPs) provide a principled, practical, probabilistic approach to learning in kernel machines. GPs have received increased attention in the machine-learning community over the past decade, and this book provides a long-needed systematic and unified treatment of theoretical and practical aspects of GPs in machine learning. The treatment is comprehensive and self-contained, targeted at researchers and students in machine learning and applied statistics. The book deals with the supervised-learning problem for both regression and classification, and includes detailed algorithms. A wide variety of covariance (kernel) functions are presented and their properties discussed. Model selection is discussed both from a Bayesian and a classical perspective. Many connections to other well-known techniques from machine learning and statistics are discussed, including support-vector machines, neural networks, splines, regularization networks, relevance vector machines and others. Theoretical issues including learning curves and the PAC-Bayesian framework are treated, and several approximation methods for learning with large datasets are discussed. The book contains illustrative examples and exercises, and code and datasets are available on the Web. Appendixes provide mathematical background and a discussion of Gaussian Markov processes.

This comprehensive and accessible textbook introduces students to the basics of modern signal processing techniques.

A comprehensive guide to the conceptual, mathematical, and implementational aspects of analyzing electrical brain signals, including data from MEG, EEG, and LFP recordings. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of analyzing electrical brain signals. It explains the conceptual, mathematical, and implementational (via Matlab programming) aspects of time-, time-frequency- and synchronization-based analyses of magnetoencephalography (MEG), electroencephalography (EEG), and local field potential (LFP) recordings from humans and nonhuman animals. It is the only book on the topic that covers both the theoretical background and the implementation in language that can be understood by readers without extensive formal training in mathematics, including cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and psychologists. Readers who go through the book chapter by chapter and implement the examples in Matlab will develop an understanding of why and how analyses are performed, how to interpret results, what the methodological issues are, and how to perform single-subject-level and group-level analyses. Researchers who are familiar with using automated programs to perform advanced analyses will learn what happens when they click the “analyze now” button. The book provides sample data and downloadable Matlab code. Each of the 38 chapters covers one analysis topic, and these topics progress from simple to advanced. Most chapters conclude with exercises that further develop the material covered in the chapter. Many of the methods presented (including convolution, the Fourier transform, and Euler's formula) are fundamental and form the groundwork for other advanced data analysis methods. Readers who master the methods in the book will be well prepared to learn other approaches.

Doing Meta-Analysis with R: A Hands-On Guide serves as an accessible introduction on how meta-analyses can be conducted in R. Essential steps for meta-analysis are covered, including calculation and pooling of outcome measures, forest plots, heterogeneity diagnostics, subgroup analyses, meta-regression, methods to control for publication bias, risk of bias assessments and plotting tools. Advanced but highly relevant topics such as network meta-analysis, multi-three-level meta-analyses, Bayesian meta-analysis approaches and SEM meta-analysis are also covered. A companion R package, dmetar, is introduced at the beginning of the guide. It contains data sets and several helper functions for the meta and metafor package used in the guide. The programming and statistical background covered in the book are kept at a non-expert level, making the book widely accessible. Features • Contains two introductory chapters on how to set up an R environment and do basic imports/manipulations of meta-analysis data, including exercises • Describes statistical concepts clearly and concisely before applying them in R • Includes step-by-step guidance through the coding required to perform meta-analyses, and a companion R package for the book

Cover all the machine learning techniques relevant for forecasting problems, ranging from univariate and multivariate time series to supervised learning, to state-of-the-art deep forecasting models such as LSTMs, recurrent neural networks, Facebook’s open-source Prophet model, and Amazon’s DeepAR model. Rather than focus on a specific set of models, this book presents an exhaustive overview of all the techniques relevant to practitioners of forecasting. It begins by explaining the different categories of models that are relevant for forecasting in a high-level language. Next, it covers univariate and multivariate time series models followed by advanced machine learning and deep learning models. It concludes with reflections on model selection such as benchmark scores vs. understandability of models vs. compute time, and automated retraining and updating of models. Each of the models presented in this book is covered in depth, with an intuitive simple explanation of the model, a mathematical transcription of the idea, and Python code that applies the model to an example data set. Reading this book will add a competitive edge to your current forecasting skillset. The book is also adapted to those who have recently started working on forecasting tasks and are looking for an exhaustive book that allows them to start with traditional models and gradually move into more and more advanced models. What You Will Learn Carry out forecasting with Python Mathematically and intuitively understand traditional forecasting models and state-of-the-art machine learning techniques Gain the basics of forecasting and machine learning, including evaluation of models, cross-validation, and back testing Select the right model for the right use case Who This Book Is For The advanced nature of the later chapters makes the book relevant for applied experts working in the domain of forecasting, as the models covered have been published only recently. Experts working in the domain will want to update their skills as traditional models are regularly being outperformed by newer models.