Hyndsight

Thoughts on research, forecasting, statistics, and other distractions.

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All Hyndsight posts by date

Advice to PhD applicants

25 January 2019

computing, mathematics, statistics, supervision

For students who are interested in doing a PhD at Monash under my supervision. First, check that you satisfy the following criteria: You must have completed a degree in statistics that involved some research component (e.g., an honours or masters thesis). A degree in computer science, mathematics or econometrics might be acceptable if it contained a substantial amount of statistics. A degree in any other field is not sufficient background to work with me.

forecast 8.5

18 January 2019

forecasting, graphics, R, time series

The latest minor release of the forecast package has now been approved on CRAN and should be available in the next day or so. Version 8.5 contains the following new features Updated tsCV() to handle exogenous regressors. Reimplemented naive(), snaive(), rwf() for substantial speed improvements. Added support for passing arguments to auto.arima() unit root tests. Improved auto.arima() stepwise search algorithm (some neighbouring models were missed previously). We haven’t done a major release for two years, and there is unlikely to be another one now.

Network for early career researchers in forecasting

22 December 2018

forecasting, conferences

The International Institute of Forecasters has established interest group sections, devoted to specialized domains of forecasting. One of the first such sections will be for early career researchers. So if you are a PhD student, post-doc, or otherwise a relatively junior researcher working in forecasting, this is for you! The first events will be during the ISF in Thessaloniki in June 2019, including the following: ECR welcoming event. A meet and greet event prior to the ISF welcome reception.

Why doesn't auto.arima() return the model with the lowest AICc value?

18 December 2018

This question seems to come up frequently on crossvalidated.com or in my inbox. I have this time series, however it yields different results when I use the auto.arima and Arima functions. library(forecast) xd <- ts(c(23786, 25955, 54373, 21561, 14552, 13284, 12714, 11821, 15445, 21307, 17228, 20007, 23065, 32811, 43147, 15127, 13497, 12224, 11412, 11888, 14210,18978, 15782, 17216, 16417, 22861, 42616, 17057, 9741, 10503, 7170, 10686, 9762, 15773, 15280, 13212, 14784, 26104, 29947), frequency = 12, start=c(2014,1), end=c(2017,3)) fit1 <- auto.

Using ggplot2 for functional time series

12 December 2018

time series, R, graphics

This week I’ve been attending the Functional Data and Beyond workshop at the Matrix centre in Creswick. I spoke yesterday about using ggplot2 for functional data graphics, rather than the custom-built plotting functionality available in the many functional data packages, including my own rainbow package written with Hanlin Shang. It is a much more powerful and flexible way to work, so I thought it would be useful to share some examples.

M4 Forecasting Conference

28 November 2018

forecasting, R, reproducible research, time series, conferences

Following the highly successful M4 Forecasting Competition, there will be a conference held on 10-11 December at Tribeca Rooftop, New York, to discuss the results. The conference will elaborate on the findings of the M4 Competition, with prominent speakers from leading business firms (Amazon, Uber, Google, Microsoft, SAS, and ProLogistica) and top universities. Nassim Nicholas Taleb will deliver a keynote address about uncertainty in forecasting and elaborate on his claims that “tail risks are much worse now than in 2007” while Spyros Makridakis will discuss how organizations can benefit by improving the accuracy of their predictions and assessing uncertainty realistically.

MeDaScIn 2018

26 August 2018

conferences, data science, seminars, forecasting, R

The annual Melbourne Data Science Initiative (or MeDaScIn, pronounced medicine) is on again next month (24-27 September) with lots of tutorials, and the annual datathon. This year there will be a “Forecasting with R” workshop (25 September) led my two of my Monash colleagues – George Athanasopoulos and Elena Sanina. Another great tutorial will be led by Steph Kovalchik (from Tennis Australia) on sports analytics with R (24 September). For the full list of tutorials, see the MeDaScIn website.

National Science Week Melbourne Mathematics Activities

6 August 2018

seminars, acems, mathematics, Monash University

Next week is National Science Week and there are a few mathematics activities happening around Melbourne that are being sponsored by ACEMS. Elsewhere in Melbourne: Mon 13 Aug 2018, 6:00pm - 7:30pmPublic Talk: **Is this your card?**Location: University of MelbourneSpeakers: Anthony Mays & Jen Palisse Pick a card, any card! The immortal phrase of the magician. In this talk, we'll look at some great card tricks that have simple maths behind them.

Saving ts objects as csv files

3 August 2018

time series, R

Occasionally R might not be the tool you want to use (hard to believe, but apparently that happens). Then you may need to export some data from R via a csv file. When the data is stored as a ts object, the time index can easily get lost. So I wrote a little function to make this easier, using the tsibble package to do almost all of the work in looking after the time index.

UseR!2018 talks

15 July 2018

All talks from useR!2018, held in Brisbane last week, are now available on YouTube.

Links to talks from members of my research team are given below.