Time Series Forecasting with ARIMA

This tutorial demonstrates how to implement the models and forecasting discussed in this unit. Since we are using Google Colab, you can jump to Step 2 to begin this programming example. Upon completing this tutorial, you should be able to construct models, make forecasts and validate forecasts given a time series data set.

Step 3 - The ARIMA Time Series Model

One of the most common methods used in time series forecasting is known as the ARIMA model, which stands for AutoregRessive Integrated Moving Average. ARIMA is a model that can be fitted to time series data in order to better understand or predict future points in the series.

There are three distinct integers ( p, d, q) that are used to parametrize ARIMA models. Because of that, ARIMA models are denoted with the notation ARIMA(p, d, q). Together these three parameters account for seasonality, trend, and noise in datasets:

  • p is the auto-regressive part of the model. It allows us to incorporate the effect of past values into our model. Intuitively, this would be similar to stating that it is likely to be warm tomorrow if it has been warm the past 3 days.
  • d is the integrated part of the model. This includes terms in the model that incorporate the amount of differencing (i.e. the number of past time points to subtract from the current value) to apply to the time series. Intuitively, this would be similar to stating that it is likely to be the same temperature tomorrow if the difference in temperature in the last three days has been very small.
  • q is the moving average part of the model. This allows us to set the error of our model as a linear combination of the error values observed at previous time points in the past.

When dealing with seasonal effects, we make use of the seasonal ARIMA, which is denoted as ARIMA(p,d,q)(P,D,Q)s. Here, (p, d, q) are the non-seasonal parameters described above, while (P, D, Q) follow the same definition but are applied to the seasonal component of the time series. The term s is the periodicity of the time series ( 4 for quarterly periods, 12 for yearly periods, etc.).

The seasonal ARIMA method can appear daunting because of the multiple tuning parameters involved. In the next section, we will describe how to automate the process of identifying the optimal set of parameters for the seasonal ARIMA time series model.