Prepping data for AutoML forecasting

Forecasting is very different from either classification or regression. ML models for regression or classification predict some output based on some input data. ML models for forecasting, on the other hand, predict a future state based on patterns found in the past. This means that there are key time-related details you need to pay attention to while shaping your data.

For this exercise, you are going to use the OJ Sales Simulated Data Azure Open Dataset for forecasting. Similar to the Diabetes Sample Azure Open Dataset you used for regression, OJ Sales Simulated Data is available simply by having an Azure account. You will use this data to create a model to predict future orange juice sales across different brands and stores.

There is one additional key difference; OJ Sales Simulated Data is a file dataset instead of a tabular dataset. While tabular datasets consist of one file containing columns and rows, file datasets consist of many files...