Sequential data analysis

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
                                                          - Donald Rumsfeld, Former Secretary of Defense

The very first business question I came across after the 1st edition was published revolved around product sequential analysis. The team worked on complicated Excel spreadsheets and pivot tables, along with a bunch of SAS code, to produce insights. After coming across this problem, I explored what could be done with R and was pleasantly surprised to stumble into the TraMineR package, specifically designed...