Key Business Analytics

5

Forecasting/time series analysis

What is it?

To understand what time series analysis is you must first understand what time series data is. Essentially, time series data is data that is collected at uniformly spaced intervals. For example, the closing value of the FTSE is time series data, or the annual flow volume of the Thames is time series data because the data is measured consistently at particular times to plot the changes.

Time series analysis explores this data to extract meaningful statistics or data characteristics. The data collected is not random but rather it is based on the assumption that successive values in the data file represent consecutive measurements taken at equally spaced time intervals.

Time series analysis is a forecasting ...