Week 4: The forecaster’s toolbox
Week 4
Build the practical forecasting toolkit: benchmark methods, transformations, regression with seasonality, and evaluation.
Quiz highlight
Week 4 quiz
Due Wednesday 25 March
Quiz links switch with your selected course, so this stays as the main weekly action.
Prepare before class
Read Chapter 5 plus Section 7.4 of FPP3 so the benchmark methods and useful predictors feel familiar before class.
Seminar and workshop
Wednesday 25 March · Seminar 3:00pm to 3:50pm, workshop 4:00pm to 4:50pm · Building K Level 3, K321
Focus
- Benchmark forecasting methods
- Residuals, fitted values, and evaluation
- Linear trends, dummy seasonality, and transformations
Assessment
Week 4 quiz on Wednesday 25 March
GA1 on Tuesday 24 March · Week 4 quiz on Wednesday 25 March
What you will learn this week
- Forecasting workflow
- Four benchmark forecasting methods that we will use for comparison
- Linear trends, dummy seasonality
- Fitted values, residuals
- Forecasting using transformations
- Forecasting with decompositions
- Forecast evaluation
Pre-class activities
- Read Chapter 5 of the textbook and watch all embedded videos
- Read Chapter 7.4 of the textbook and watch the embedded video. Ignore Fourier series for the moment.
Slides for seminar
Seminar Code
Tutorial exercises (in class or on your own)
NoteTutorial Learning Objectives
- Apply and compare simple benchmark forecasting methods.
- Able to select and implement appropriate baseline forecasting methods (e.g., NAIVE, SNAIVE, random walk with drift) for a variety of real-world time series and produce forecast plots.
- Evaluate forecasting performance using simple benchmark forecasting methods.
- Produce and visualise forecasts and evaluate whether a simple benchmark provides a reasonable baseline for forecasting.
- Decompose and forecast with STL methods.
- Apply STL decomposition to extract time series components.
- Able to generate seasonally adjusted forecasts, reseasonalise results, and compare performance with simple benchmark methods while interpreting residuals.
Complete Exercises 1, 3, 5, 11 from Section 5.11 of the book.
Complete Exercise 2 from Section 7.10 of the book.
Assignments
Weekly quiz
- Week 4 quiz: Open ETF3231 quiz Open ETF5231 quiz — Due Wednesday 25 March.