Understanding time series data

When it comes to using time series data, there are endless ways to visualize and display data to effectively communicate a thought or idea. In most of the data we have used so far, we have handled features and labels in which a certain set of features generally corresponded to a label of interest. When it comes to time series data, we tend to forego the idea of a class or label and focus more on trends within the data instead. One of the most common applications of time series data is the idea of demand forecasting. Demand forecasting, as its name suggests, comprises the many methods and tools available to help predict demand for a given good or service ahead of time. Throughout this section, we will learn about the many aspects of time series analysis using a dataset concerning the demand forecasting of a given biotechnology product.

Treating time series data as a structured dataset

There are many different biotechnology products on the market...