Summary
In this chapter, we have introduced the concept of time-series and discussed the properties of stationary processes and how to manipulate a dataset to remove irregularities through a process called smoothing. This method allows us to perform a data cleansing step when the time-series is heavily affected by white noise. It's also helpful when it's important to visualize the trends or seasonality without the secondary effects due to the noise. We have shown how AR, MA, and ARMA models can successfully forecast stationary time-series and how, using the technique of differencing, it's possible to train ARIMA models in order to also forecast non-stationary time-series. Another fundamental concept that we have discussed is auto-correlation, which allows us to have a clear insight into the behavior of the time-series with minimal effort. This kind of analysis helps the data scientist to choose the most appropriate model.
In the next chapter, we start discussing...