Dive Into Data Science

2 Forecasting

Let’s look at some data science tools that can help you predict the future. In this chapter, we’ll introduce a simple business scenario in which a company needs to forecast customer demand. We’ll then talk about how tools from data science can be applied to make an accurate forecast and how that forecast can lead to better business decision-making.

We’ll use linear regression for our forecasting, and we’ll discuss both univariate and multivariate linear regression. Finally, we’ll look at extrapolation of regression lines and how to evaluate various regression models to choose the best one.

Predicting Customer Demand

Imagine ...