SES vs naive

In this exercise, you will apply your knowledge of training and test sets, the subset() function, and the accuracy() function, all of which you learned in Chapter 2, to compare SES and naive forecasts for the marathon data.

You did something very similar to compare the naive and mean forecasts in an earlier exercise "Evaluating forecast accuracy of non-seasonal methods".

Let's review the process:

First, import and load your data. Determine how much of your data you want to allocate to training, and how much to testing; the sets should not overlap.
Subset the data to create a training set, which you will use as an argument in your forecasting function(s). Optionally, you can also create a test set to use later.
Compute forecasts of the training set using whichever forecasting function(s) you choose, and set h equal to the number of values you want to forecast, which is also the length of the test set.
To view the results, use the accuracy() function with the forecast as the first argument and original data (or test set) as the second.
Pick a measure in the output, such as RMSE or MAE, to evaluate the forecast(s); a smaller error indicates higher accuracy.

The marathon data is loaded into your workspace.

This exercise is part of the course

Forecasting in R

Exercise instructions

Using subset(), create a training set for marathon comprising all but the last 20 years of the data which you will reserve for testing.
Compute the SES and naive forecasts of this training set and save them to fcses and fcnaive, respectively.
Calculate forecast accuracy measures of the two sets of forecasts using the accuracy() function in your console.
Assign the best forecasts (either fcses or fcnaive) based on RMSE to fcbest.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Create a training set using subset()
train <- ___(___, end = length(marathon) - ___)

# Compute SES and naive forecasts, save to fcses and fcnaive
fcses <- ses(___, h = ___)
fcnaive <- naive(___, h = ___)

# Calculate forecast accuracy measures
accuracy(___, ___)
accuracy(___, ___)

# Save the best forecasts as fcbest
fcbest <- ___

Edit and Run Code

This exercise is part of the course

Forecasting in R

IntermediateSkill Level

4.8+

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The first thing to do in any data analysis task is to plot the data. Graphs enable many features of the data to be visualized, including patterns, unusual observations, and changes over time. The features that are seen in plots of the data must then be incorporated, as far as possible, into the forecasting methods to be used.

Exercise 1: Welcome to Forecasting Using R Exercise 2: Creating time series objects in R Exercise 3: Time series plots Exercise 4: Seasonal plots Exercise 5: Trends, seasonality, and cyclicity Exercise 6: Autocorrelation of non-seasonal time series Exercise 7: Autocorrelation of seasonal and cyclic time series Exercise 8: Match the ACF to the time series Exercise 9: White noise Exercise 10: Stock prices and white noise

In this chapter, you will learn general tools that are useful for many different forecasting situations. It will describe some methods for benchmark forecasting, methods for checking whether a forecasting method has adequately utilized the available information, and methods for measuring forecast accuracy. Each of the tools discussed in this chapter will be used repeatedly in subsequent chapters as you develop and explore a range of forecasting methods.

Exercise 1: Forecasts and potential futures Exercise 2: Naive forecasting methods Exercise 3: Fitted values and residuals Exercise 4: Checking time series residuals Exercise 5: Training and test sets Exercise 6: Evaluating forecast accuracy of non-seasonal methods Exercise 7: Evaluating forecast accuracy of seasonal methods Exercise 8: Do I have a good forecasting model?Exercise 9: Time series cross-validation Exercise 10: Using tsCV() for time series cross-validation

Forecasts produced using exponential smoothing methods are weighted averages of past observations, with the weights decaying exponentially as the observations get older. In other words, the more recent the observation, the higher the associated weight. This framework generates reliable forecasts quickly and for a wide range of time series, which is a great advantage and of major importance to applications in business.

Exercise 1: Exponentially weighted forecasts Exercise 2: Simple exponential smoothing Exercise 3: SES vs naive

Current Exercise

Exercise 4: Exponential smoothing methods with trend Exercise 5: Holt's trend methods Exercise 6: Exponential smoothing methods with trend and seasonality Exercise 7: Holt-Winters with monthly data Exercise 8: Holt-Winters method with daily data Exercise 9: State space models for exponential smoothing Exercise 10: Automatic forecasting with exponential smoothing Exercise 11: ETS vs seasonal naive Exercise 12: Match the models to the time series Exercise 13: When does ETS fail?

ARIMA models provide another approach to time series forecasting. Exponential smoothing and ARIMA models are the two most widely-used approaches to time series forecasting, and provide complementary approaches to the problem. While exponential smoothing models are based on a description of the trend and seasonality in the data, ARIMA models aim to describe the autocorrelations in the data.

Exercise 1: Transformations for variance stabilization Exercise 2: Box-Cox transformations for time series Exercise 3: Non-seasonal differencing for stationarity Exercise 4: Seasonal differencing for stationarity Exercise 5: ARIMA models Exercise 6: Automatic ARIMA models for non-seasonal time series Exercise 7: Forecasting with ARIMA models Exercise 8: Comparing auto.arima() and ets() on non-seasonal data Exercise 9: Seasonal ARIMA models Exercise 10: Automatic ARIMA models for seasonal time series Exercise 11: Exploring auto.arima() options Exercise 12: Comparing auto.arima() and ets() on seasonal data

The time series models in the previous chapters work well for many time series, but they are often not good for weekly or hourly data, and they do not allow for the inclusion of other information such as the effects of holidays, competitor activity, changes in the law, etc. In this chapter, you will look at some methods that handle more complicated seasonality, and you consider how to extend ARIMA models in order to allow other information to be included in the them.

Exercise 1: Dynamic regression Exercise 2: Forecasting sales allowing for advertising expenditure Exercise 3: Forecasting electricity demand Exercise 4: Dynamic harmonic regression Exercise 5: Forecasting weekly data Exercise 6: Harmonic regression for multiple seasonality Exercise 7: Forecasting call bookings Exercise 8: TBATS models Exercise 9: TBATS models for electricity demand Exercise 10: Your future in forecasting!