Human beings have always tried to predict the future. Forecasting has been, therefore, one of the most studied techniques over time. Forecasts cover several fields—weather forecasts, economic and political events, sports results, and more. Since we try to predict so many different events, there are a variety of ways in which predictions can be developed.
A time series is a sequence of observations ordered with respect to time (for example, monthly turnover, the daily prices of shares, the weekly interest rate, the annual profits, and so on). The purpose of the analysis of time series consists of the study of the past evolution of the phenomenon with respect to time, in order to predict the future trend of the phenomenon. The forecast is obtained by hypothesizing that such behavioral regularities will repeat in the...
