# greybox package for R

I am delighted to announce a new package on CRAN. It is called “greybox”. I know, what my American friends will say, as soon as they see the name – they will claim that there is a typo, and that it should be “a” instead of “e”. But in fact no mistake was made – […]

# Comparing additive and multiplicative regressions using AIC in R

One of the basic things the students are taught in statistics classes is that the comparison of models using information criteria can only be done when the models have the same response variable. This means, for example, that when you have $$\log(y_t)$$ and calculate AIC, then this value is not comparable with AIC from a […]

# “smooth” package for R. Common ground. Part II. Estimators

UPDATE: Starting from the v2.5.1 the cfType parameter has been renamed into loss. This post has been updated since then in order to include the more recent name. A bit about estimates of parameters Hi everyone! Today I want to tell you about parameters estimation of smooth functions. But before going into details, there are […]

# Multiplicative State-Space Models for Intermittent Time Series

John Boylan and I have been working on a paper about state-space models for intermittent data. We have had some good progress in that direction and have submitted the paper to IJF. Although it is still under review, we decided to publish the working paper in order to promote the thing. Here’s the abstract: Intermittent […]

# Old dog, new tricks: a modelling view of simple moving averages

Fotios Petropoulos and I have recently written a paper about a statistical model, underlying Simple Moving Average. Although we are usually taught in Forecasting courses, that there is no such thing, we found one. We have submitted this paper to International Journal of Production Research, and it has been recently accepted (took us ~4 months). […]

# “smooth” package for R. es() function. Part IV. Model selection and combination of forecasts

Mixed models In the previous posts we have discussed pure additive and pure multiplicative exponential smoothing models. The next logical step would be to discuss mixed models, where some components have additive and the others have multiplicative nature. But we won’t spend much time on them because I personally think that they do not make […]

# “smooth” package for R. es() function. Part III. Multiplicative models

Theoretical stuff Last time we talked about pure additive models, today I want to discuss multiplicative ones. There is a general scepticism about pure multiplicative exponential smoothing models in the forecasters society, because it is not clear why level, trend, seasonality and error term should be multiplied. Well, when it comes to seasonality, then there […]

# “smooth” package for R. es() function. Part II. Pure additive models

A bit of statistics As mentioned in the previous post, all the details of models underlying functions of “smooth” package can be found in extensive documentation. Here I want to discuss several basic, important aspects of statistical model underlying es() and how it is implementated in R. Today we will have a look at basic […]

# 19th IIF Workshop presentation

An IIF workshop “Supply Chain Forecasting for Operations” took place at Lancaster University on 28th and 29th of June. I have given a presentation on a topic that John Boylan and I are currently working on. We suggest a universal statistical model, that allows uniting standard methods of forecasting (for example, for fast moving products) […]

# True model

In the modern statistical literature there is a notion of “true model”, by which people usually mean some abstract mathematical model, presumably lying in the core of observed process. Roughly saying, it is implied that data we have has been generated by some big guy with a white beard sitting in mathematical clouds using some […]