IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/amstat/v72y2018i1p37-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forecasting at Scale

Author

Listed:
  • Sean J. Taylor
  • Benjamin Letham

Abstract

Forecasting is a common data science task that helps organizations with capacity planning, goal setting, and anomaly detection. Despite its importance, there are serious challenges associated with producing reliable and high-quality forecasts—especially when there are a variety of time series and analysts with expertise in time series modeling are relatively rare. To address these challenges, we describe a practical approach to forecasting “at scale” that combines configurable models with analyst-in-the-loop performance analysis. We propose a modular regression model with interpretable parameters that can be intuitively adjusted by analysts with domain knowledge about the time series. We describe performance analyses to compare and evaluate forecasting procedures, and automatically flag forecasts for manual review and adjustment. Tools that help analysts to use their expertise most effectively enable reliable, practical forecasting of business time series.

Suggested Citation

  • Sean J. Taylor & Benjamin Letham, 2018. "Forecasting at Scale," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 72(1), pages 37-45, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:amstat:v:72:y:2018:i:1:p:37-45
    DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2017.1380080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00031305.2017.1380080
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00031305.2017.1380080?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carpenter, Bob & Gelman, Andrew & Hoffman, Matthew D. & Lee, Daniel & Goodrich, Ben & Betancourt, Michael & Brubaker, Marcus & Guo, Jiqiang & Li, Peter & Riddell, Allen, 2017. "Stan: A Probabilistic Programming Language," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 76(i01).
    2. De Gooijer, Jan G. & Hyndman, Rob J., 2006. "25 years of time series forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 443-473.
    3. Hyndman, Rob J. & Koehler, Anne B. & Snyder, Ralph D. & Grose, Simone, 2002. "A state space framework for automatic forecasting using exponential smoothing methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 439-454.
    4. Tashman, Leonard J., 2000. "Out-of-sample tests of forecasting accuracy: an analysis and review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 437-450.
    5. Lawrence, Michael & Goodwin, Paul & O'Connor, Marcus & Onkal, Dilek, 2006. "Judgmental forecasting: A review of progress over the last 25 years," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 493-518.
    6. Tashman, Leonard J. & Leach, Michael L., 1991. "Automatic forecasting software: A survey and evaluation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 209-230, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    2. R Fildes & K Nikolopoulos & S F Crone & A A Syntetos, 2008. "Forecasting and operational research: a review," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(9), pages 1150-1172, September.
    3. Makridakis, Spyros & Hyndman, Rob J. & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2020. "Forecasting in social settings: The state of the art," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 15-28.
    4. Theodosiou, Marina, 2011. "Forecasting monthly and quarterly time series using STL decomposition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1178-1195, October.
    5. Jan G. De Gooijer & Rob J. Hyndman, 2005. "25 Years of IIF Time Series Forecasting: A Selective Review," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 12/05, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    6. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Trapero, Juan R., 2014. "Improving forecasting by estimating time series structural components across multiple frequencies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 291-302.
    7. Pawlikowski, Maciej & Chorowska, Agata, 2020. "Weighted ensemble of statistical models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 93-97.
    8. Alysha M De Livera, 2010. "Automatic forecasting with a modified exponential smoothing state space framework," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 10/10, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    9. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Makridakis, Spyros & Kaltsounis, Anastasios & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2021. "Product sales probabilistic forecasting: An empirical evaluation using the M5 competition data," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    10. Barrow, Devon K., 2016. "Forecasting intraday call arrivals using the seasonal moving average method," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 6088-6096.
    11. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2024. "On the update frequency of univariate forecasting models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 314(1), pages 111-121.
    12. Uwe Hassler & Marc-Oliver Pohle, 2019. "Forecasting under Long Memory and Nonstationarity," Papers 1910.08202, arXiv.org.
    13. Han, Weiwei & Wang, Xun & Petropoulos, Fotios & Wang, Jing, 2019. "Brain imaging and forecasting: Insights from judgmental model selection," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1-9.
    14. Evangelos Spiliotis & Fotios Petropoulos & Vassilios Assimakopoulos, 2023. "On the Disagreement of Forecasting Model Selection Criteria," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-12, June.
    15. Makridakis, Spyros & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Chen, Zhi & Gaba, Anil & Tsetlin, Ilia & Winkler, Robert L., 2022. "The M5 uncertainty competition: Results, findings and conclusions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1365-1385.
    16. Andrawis, Robert R. & Atiya, Amir F. & El-Shishiny, Hisham, 2011. "Forecast combinations of computational intelligence and linear models for the NN5 time series forecasting competition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 672-688, July.
    17. Chew Lian Chua & G. C. Lim & Sarantis Tsiaplias, 2012. "A latent variable approach to forecasting the unemployment rate," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 229-244, April.
    18. Savio, Nicolas D. & Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos, 2013. "A strategic forecasting framework for governmental decision-making and planning," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 311-321.
    19. Jackson, Ilya & Ivanov, Dmitry, 2023. "A beautiful shock? Exploring the impact of pandemic shocks on the accuracy of AI forecasting in the beauty care industry," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    20. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2018. "Cross-temporal aggregation: Improving the forecast accuracy of hierarchical electricity consumption," MPRA Paper 91762, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:amstat:v:72:y:2018:i:1:p:37-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/UTAS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.