Time Series Analysis

Introduction

Time series is a set of observations generated sequentially in time. If the set is continuous then the time series is continuous. If the set is discrete then the time series is discrete. 

See the plot below. It is drawn from a data of monthly bookings for an airline. This data is a time series. 

The usage of time series models is twofold: 

• Obtain an understanding of the underlying forces and structure that produced the observed data
• Fit a model and proceed to forecasting and monitoring.

XLMiner analyzes Univariate Discrete Time Series. It uses several techniques for exploring and forecasting time series data. 

Exploratory techniques : We use these techniques as a beginning. Some conclusions can be drawn by just observing the plots drawn using these techniques. XLMiner uses ACF (Autocorrelation function) and PACF (Par