Summary

Through this brief survey of time series, you learned why time series data can be problematic if not analyzed with specialized techniques. You followed the developments of mathematicians and statisticians as they created new techniques to achieve higher forecasting accuracy or greater ease of use. You also learned what motivated the Prophet team to add their own contributions to this legacy and what decisions they made in their approach, and you learned how the open source community has reacted and begun work on different approaches.

In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to get Prophet running on your machine and build your first model. By the end of this book, you’ll understand every feature, no matter how small, and have them all in your toolbox to supercharge your own forecasts.