Exploring Time Series Data
Wayne A. Woodward, Bivin P. Sadler, Stephen D. Robertson · 2022
Analogous to the utilization of visual representations in traditional data analysis, plotting data will play a central role in the time series setting. Time series data often have patterns that are noisy. It is often the case that such noisy behavior tends to hide the underlying fundamental patterns in the time series. The centered moving average smoother is a method for replacing data values in a time series with an average of data values surrounding (and including) that data point. Obviously, a primary application of time series analysis is that of forecasting. It was previously stated that one of the purposes of smoothing is to forecast future values. Indeed, if evidence exists that previous patterns in a dataset will continue into the future, various techniques can be used to make forecasts.