smooth v4.3.0 in R: what’s new and what’s next?

Sticker of the smooth package for R

Good news! The smooth package v4.3.0 is now on CRAN. And there are several things worth mentioning, so I have written this post. New default initialisation mechanism Since the beginning of the package, the smooth functions supported three ways for initialising the state vector (the vector that includes level, trend, seasonal indices): optimisation, backcasting and … Read more

What does “lower error measure” really mean?

“My amazing forecasting method has a lower MASE than any other method!” You’ve probably seen claims like this on social media or in papers. But have you ever thought about what it really means? Many forecasting experiments come to applying several approaches to a dataset, calculating error measures for each method per time series and … Read more

The Long and Winding Road: The Story of Complex Exponential Smoothing

About the paper. Disclaimer The idea of using complex variables in modelling and forecasting was originally proposed by my father, Sergey Svetunkov. Based on that, we developed several models, which were then used in some of our research. We worked together in this direction and published several articles in Russian. My father even published a … Read more

Complex Exponential Smoothing

Authors: Ivan Svetunkov, Nikolaos Kourentzes, Keith Ord. Journal: Naval Research Logistics Abstract: Exponential smoothing has been one of the most popular forecasting methods used to support various decisions in organisations, in activities such as inventory management, scheduling, revenue management and other areas. Although its relative simplicity and transparency have made it very attractive for research … Read more

A simple combination of univariate models

Fotios Petropoulos and I have participated last year in M4 competition. Our approach performed well, finishing as 6th in the competition. This paper in International Journal of Forecasting explains what we used in our approach and why. Here’s the abstract: This paper describes the approach that we implemented for producing the point forecasts and prediction … Read more

“smooth” package for R. Common ground. Part I. Prediction intervals

UPDATE: Starting from v2.5.1 the parameter intervals has been renamed into interval for the consistency purposes with the other R functions. We have spent previous six posts discussing basics of es() function (underlying models and their implementation). Now it is time to move forward. Starting from this post we will discuss common parameters, shared by … Read more

Complex Exponential Smoothing (Working paper)

Some time ago I have published the working paper on Complex Exponential Smoothing on ResearchGate website. This is the paper written by Nikolaos Kourentzes and I in 2015. It explains a new approach in time series modelling and in forecasting, based on a notion of “information potential”. The model, resulting from this idea, allows to … Read more

Presentation on Management Science seminar at Lancaster University

Today I have given a presentation on the topic of Complex Exponential Smoothing on Management Science seminar at Lancaster University. Lecturers and PhD students of the department attended the presentation and seemed to like it. However, only in the morning of the day I realised that I have prepared a wrong presentation (it should have … Read more