Higher Education · Probability & Statistics
Time Series
What is it
Time series analysis studies data collected sequentially over time, covering trend, seasonality, and autocorrelation, and models like ARIMA that use a series' own past values to forecast its future.
Why it matters
Time series methods are used constantly in economics, finance, and operations — forecasting stock prices, demand, or weather all rely on exactly these techniques for making principled predictions from historical patterns.
Exam tip
Before fitting a model, always plot the time series and check for trend and seasonality visually — fitting a model that assumes stationarity to data that clearly isn't stationary is one of the most common and consequential errors in time series analysis.
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