Re:Forecasting in Python with Prophet
by CapmCrackaWaka on Friday February 22, 2019 @09:05PM
(#19231126)
Yes, exactly. However in this case, the offset is multiplicative.
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Understood. To add one more point, I'm noticing the reason the above works the way it does is because most forecast algorithms output an expected value instead of a random variable, hence the results are E[g(log(Y)] instead of just g(log(Y)).
It strikes me that if you package the entire thing as a random variable:
Z = exp(G(log(Y)))
and use a different kind of forecast function G : Y -> Y' where Y, Y' ~ Normal, then we don't need the multiplicative factor -- which can be difficult to calculate for an arbitrary transformation. We can just get the expected value of Z, ie. E[Z] = E[exp(G(log(Y)))]. This is not done in the article, but in theory it could be.