Introduction to Time Series Data
Time Series is defined as a set of observations taken at a particular period of time. For example, having a set of login details at regular interval of time of each user can be categorized as a time series. On the other hand, when the data is collected at once or irregularly, it is not taken as a time series data.
What are the types of Time Series Data?
Time Series Data can be classified into two types -
- Stock Series - It is a measure of attributes at a particular point in time and taken as stock takes.
- Flow Series - It is a measure of activity at a specific interval of time. It contains effects related to the calendar.
Time series data is a set of values organized by time-series data which include sensor data, stock prices, click stream data and application telemetry. Source: Time Series -AzureIt is a sequence that is taken successively at the equal pace of time. This appears naturally in many application areas such as economics, science, environment, medicine, etc. There are many practical real-life problems where data might be correlated with each other and are observed sequentially at the equal period of time. This is because, if the repeatedly observe the data at a regular interval of time, it is obvious that data would be correlated with each other.
With the use of time series, it becomes possible to imagine what will happen in the future as a future event depends upon the current situation. It is useful to divide the time series into historical and validation period. The model is built to make predictions on the basis of historical data and then this model is applied to the validation set of observations. With this process, the idea is developed how the model will perform in forecasting. It is also known as the stochastic process as it represents the vector of stochastic variables observed at regular interval of time.
What are the components of Time Series Data?
In order to analyze the time series data, there is a need to understand the underlying pattern of data ordered at a particular time. This pattern is composed of different components which collectively yield the set of observations of time series. The Components of time series data are given below-
- Trend
- Cyclical
- Seasonal
- Irregular
Trend
It is a long pattern present in the time series. Trend produces irregular effects and can be positive, negative, linear or nonlinear. It represents the variations of low frequency and the high and medium frequency of data is filtered out from the time series. If it does not contain any increasing or decreasing pattern, then time series is taken as stationary in the mean. There are two types of trend -- Deterministic - In this case, the effects of the shocks present in the time series are eliminated i.e. revert to the trend in the long run.
- Stochastic - It is the process in which the effects of shocks are never eliminated as they have permanently changed the level of the time series.
Pattern Analysis with Time Series Data involves nature identification represented by a sequence of observations and forecasting. Source: Pattern Analysis with Time Series
Cyclic
The pattern exhibit up and down movements around a specified trend is known as a cyclic pattern. It is a kind of oscillations present in the time series. The duration of the cyclic pattern depends upon the industries and business problems to be analyzed. This is because the oscillations are dependable upon the business cycle. They are larger variations that are repeated in a systematic way over time. The period of time is not fixed and usually composed of at least 2 months in duration. The cyclic pattern is represented by a well-shaped curve and shows the contraction and expansion of data.
Seasonal
It is a pattern that reflects regular fluctuations. These short-term movements occur due to the seasonal factors and custom factors of people. In this case, the data faces regular and predictable changes that occurred at regular intervals of the calendar. It always consists of fixed and known period. The main sources of seasonality are given below -
- Climate
- Institutions
- Social habits and practices
- Calendar
Irregular
It is an unpredictable component of the time series. This component cannot be explained by any other component of time series because these variational fluctuations are known as a random component. When the trend-cycle and seasonal component is removed, it becomes a residual time series. These are short term fluctuations that are not systematic in nature and have unclear patterns.
A technique of predicting the future based on the results of previous data. Click to explore about, Forecasting Types and its Various Methods
How is the seasonal component estimated for Time Series Data?
If the deterministic analysis is performed, then the seasonality will remain the same for a similar interval of time. Therefore, it can easily be modeled by dummy variables. On the other hand, this concept is not fulfilled by stochastic analysis. So, dummy variables are not appropriate because the seasonal component changes throughout the time series. Different models to create a seasonal component in time series are given below-- Additive Model - It is the model in which the seasonal component is added with the trend component.
- Multiplicative Model - In this model seasonal component is multiplied with the intercept if the trend component is not present in it. But, if it have a trend component, the sum of intercept and trend is multiplied with the seasonal component.
Difference between Time Series Data and Cross-Section Data?
Time Series Data is composed of a collection of data of one specific variable at a particular interval of time. On the other hand, Cross-Section Data is consist of a collection of data on multiple variables from different sources at a particular interval of time. Collection of the company’s stock market data at a regular interval of year is an example of time series data. But when the collection of the company’s sales revenue, sales volume is collected for the past 3 months then it is taken as an example of cross-section data. Time series data is mainly used for obtaining results over an extended period of time but, cross-section data focuses on the information received from surveys at a particular time.Time-Series refers to data recording at regular intervals of time. Click to explore about, Time Series Forecasting Analysis with Deep Learning
What is Time Series Analysis?
Performing analysis of time series data is known as Time Series Analysis. The analysis are performed in order to understand the structure and functions produced by the time series. By understanding the mechanism of time series data a mathematical model could easily be developed so that further predictions, monitoring, and control can be performed. Two approaches are used for analyzing time series data are -- In the time domain
- In the frequency domain
- Decomposing the time series
- Identifying and modeling the time-based dependencies
- Forecasting
- Identifying and model the system variation
Why Time Series Analysis is important?
In order to model successfully, it is important in machine learning and deep learning. Time series analysis is used to understand the internal structure and functions that are used for producing the observations. It is used for -
- Descriptive - In this case, patterns are identified in correlated data. In other words, the variations in trends and seasonality in the time series are identified.
- Explanation - In this understanding and modeling of data is performed.
- Forecasting - Here, the prediction from previous observations is performed for short term trends.
- Invention Analysis - In this case, effect performed by any event in time series data is analyzed.
- Quality Control - When the specific size deviates it provides an alert.
What are the applications of Time Series Analysis?
Models of Time Series Data
ARIMA Model -ARIMA stands for Auto regressive Integrated Moving Average. Auto Regressive (AR) refers as lags of the differenced series, Moving Average (MA) is lags of errors and I represents the number of difference used to make the time series stationary. Assumptions followed while implementing ARIMA Model are as under -- Time series data should posses stationary property: this means that the data should be independent of time. Time series consist of cyclic behavior and white noise is also taken as a stationary.
- ARIMA model is used for a single variable. The process is meant for regression with the past values.
- Find the difference between the consecutive observations.
- For stabilizing the variance log or square root of the time series data is computed.
- If the time series consists of the trend, then the residual from the fitted curve is modulated.
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Holt-Winters
It is a model which is used for forecasting the short term period. It is usually applied to achieve exponential smoothing using additive and multiplicative models along with increasing or decreasing trends and seasonality. Smoothing is measured by beta and gamma parameters in the holt’s method.- When the beta parameter is set to FALSE, the function performs exponential smoothing.
- The gamma parameter is used for the seasonal component. If the gamma parameter is set to FALSE, a non-seasonal model is fitted.
Time Series Database and its types
Time series database is a software which is used for handling the time series data. Highly complex data such higher transnational data is not feasible for the relational database management system. Many relational systems does not work properly. Therefore, time series databases are optimized for the time series data. Various databases are given below -- CrateDB
- Graphite
- InfluxDB
- Informix TimeSeries
- Kx kdb+
- Riak-TS
- RRDtool
- OpenTSDB
What is Anomaly?
Anomaly is defined as something that deviates from normal behavior or what is expected. For more clarity let’s take an example of a bank transaction. Suppose you have a saving bank account and you mostly withdraw Rs 10,000 but, one day Rs 6,00,000 amount is withdrawn from your account. This is an unusual activity for the bank as mostly, Rs 10,000 is deducted from the account. This transaction is an anomaly for bank employees. Learn more about Forecasting Methods and Techniques in this insight. The anomaly is a kind of contradictory observation in the data. It gives the proof that a certain model or assumption does not fit into the problem statement.What are the different types of Anomalies?
Different types of anomalies are given below -- Point Anomalies - If the specific value within the dataset is anomalous with respect to the complete data then it is known as Point Anomalies. The above-mentioned example of the bank transaction is an example of point anomalies.
- Contextual Anomalies - If the occurrence of data is anomalous for specific circumstances, then it is known as Contextual Anomalies. For example, the anomaly occurs at a specific interval of period.
- Collective Anomalies - If the collection of occurrence of data is anomalous with respect to the rest of dataset then it is known as Collective Anomalies. For example, breaking the trend observed in ECG.
Time series data are collected over time with makes the highly voluminous sometimes. Click to explore about, Time-series Databases in Real-Time Analytics
How to find Anomaly in Time Series Data?
The various methods described below to find anomalies are below:
Anomaly Detection R package
It is a robust open source package used to find anomalies in the presence of seasonality and trend. This package is built on Generalised E-Test and uses Seasonal Hybrid ESD (S-H-ESD) algorithm. S-H-ESD is used to find both local and global anomalies. This package is also used to detect anomalies present in a vector of numerical variables. Is also provides better visualization such that the user can specify the direction of anomalies.
Principal Component Analysis
It is a statistical technique used to reduce higher dimensional data into lower dimensional data without any loss of information. Therefore, this technique can be used for developing the model of anomaly detection. This technique is useful at that time of situation when sufficient samples are difficult to obtain. So, PCA is used in which model is trained using available features to obtain a normal class and the distance metrics are used to determine the anomalies.Chisq Square distribution
It is a kind of statistical distribution that constitutes 0 as a minimum value and no bound for the maximum value. The chisq square test is implemented for detecting outliers from univariate variables. It detects both the lowest and highest values due to the presence of outliers on both side of the data.
What are Breakouts in Time Series Data?
Breakout are significant changes observed in the time series data. It consists of two characteristics that are given below -
- Mean shift - It is defined as a sudden change in time series. For example the usage of CPU is increased from 35% to 70%. This is taken as a mean shift. It is added when the time series move from one steady state to another state.
- Ramp Up - It is defined as a sudden increase in the value of the metric from one steady state to another. It is a slow process as compared with the mean shift. It is a slow transition process from one stable state to another.
How to detect Breakouts in Time Series Data?
In order to detect breakouts in time series Twitter has introduced a package known as Breakout Detection package. It is an open source package for detecting breakouts at a fast speed. This package uses E-Divisive with Medians (EDM) algorithm to detect the divergence within the mean. It can also be used to detect the change in distribution within the time series.Why ML and Deep Learning in Time Series Data is important?
Machine learning techniques are more effective as compared with the statistical techniques. This is because machine learning has two important features such as feature engineering and prediction. The feature engineering aspect is used to address the trend and seasonality issues of time series data. Deep Learning is used to combine the feature extraction of time series with the non-linear autoregressive model for higher level prediction. It is used to extract the useful information from the features automatically without using any human effort or complex statistical techniques.Time Series Analysis For Business Forecasting helps to forecast/predict the future values of a critical field which has a potential business value in the industry. Click to explore about, Time Series Analysis and Machine Learning Models
Anomaly Detection using Machine Learning
There are two most effective techniques of machine learning such as supervised and unsupervised learning. Firstly, supervised learning is performed for training data points so that they can be classified into anomalous and non-anomalous data points. But, for supervised learning, there should be labeled anomalous data points. Another approach for detecting anomaly is unsupervised learning. One can apply unsupervised learning to train CART so that prediction of next data points in the series could be made. To implement this, confidence interval or prediction error is made.
Therefore, to detect anomalous data points Generalised ESD-Test is implemented to check which data points are present within or outside the confidence interval The most common supervised learning algorithms are supervised neural networks, support vector machine learning, k-nearest neighbors, Bayesian networks and Decision trees. In the case of k-nearest neighbors, the approximate distance between the data points is calculated and then the assignment of unlabeled data points is made according to the class of k-nearest neighbor. On the other hand, Bayesian networks can encode the probabilistic relationships between the variables. This algorithm is mostly used with the combination of statistical techniques. The most common unsupervised algorithms are self-organizing maps (SOM), K-means, C-means, expectation-maximization meta-algorithm (EM), adaptive resonance theory (ART), and one-class support vector machine. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="758"] 
Anomaly Detection using Deep Learning
Recurrent neural network is one of the deep learning algorithm for detecting anomalous data points within it. It consist of input layer, hidden layer and output layer. The nodes within hidden layer are responsible for handling internal state and memory. They both will be updated as the new input is fed into the network. The internal state of RNN is used to process the sequence of inputs.
The important feature of memory is that it can automatically learns the time-dependent features. The process followed by RNN is described below - First the series of data is fed into the RNN model. After that, model will train the series of data to compute the normal behaviour. After computing, whenever the new input is fed into the trained network, it will be able to classify the input as normal and expected, or anomalous. Training of normal data is performed because the quantity of abnormal data is less as compared with the normal data and provides an alert whenever any abnormal activity is observed in the future. 
Time Series Data Visualization
Data Visualization is an important and quickest way for picturizing the time series data and forecasting. The different types of graphs are given below:- Line Plots.
- Histograms and Density Plots.
- Box and Whisker Plots.
- Heat Maps.
- Lag Plots or Scatter Plots.
- Autocorrelation Plots.
