Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control, Fourth Edition

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

A time series is a sequence of observations taken sequentially in time. Many sets of data appear as time series: a monthly sequence of the quantity of goods shipped from a factory, a weekly series of the number of road accidents, hourly observations made on the yield of a chemical process, and so on. Examples of time series abound in such fields as economics, business, engineering, the natural sciences (especially geophysics and meteorology), and the social sciences. Examples of data of the kind that we will be concerned with are displayed as time series plots in Figure 4.1. An intrinsic feature of a time series is that, typically, adjacent observations are dependent. The nature of this dependence among observations of a time series is of considerable practical interest. Time series analysis is concerned with techniques for the analysis of this dependence. This requires the development of stochastic and dynamic models for time series data and the use of such models in important areas of application.

In the subsequent chapters of this book we present methods for building, identifying, fitting, and checking models for time series and dynamic systems. The methods discussed are appropriate for discrete (sampled-data) systems, where observation of the system occurs at equally spaced intervals of time.

We illustrate the use of these time series and dynamic models in five important areas of application:

1. The forecasting of future values of a time series from current ...