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Forecasting

Forecasting is the process of predicting future values or outcomes from information currently available, often including historical observations.

How 3 Manning books explain it

Outlier Detection in Python

The process of predicting future values or events from historical or current data.

How it is used
Uses expected future values and forecast errors to identify point anomalies in time-series data.
How deep it goes
Explains forecast errors, robust scoring, confidence ranges, model fitting, evaluation, and horizon limitations without deriving forecasting theory.
Examples
Demonstrates synthetic weekly data, ARIMA and Random Forest forecasts, an injected outlier, MAPE evaluation, and UPS Twitter volume with Prophet.
What you can do after
Apply forecasting with Darts, scikit-learn, or Prophet to estimate values, measure errors, and flag unusually large deviations.

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Demand Forecasting Best Practices

A forecast is a prediction about a future quantity or condition based on available information.

How it is used
Supports supply-chain production, inventory, product, and cash-flow decisions at decision-specific horizons and granularities.
How deep it goes
Explains objective setting, hierarchy trade-offs, error evaluation, time-series components, and model selection without implementation detail.
Examples
Uses role-based planning decisions, product-family versus SKU forecasts, seasonal quarterly demand, and a 36.1% MAE forecast.
What you can do after
Evaluate/understand which forecast granularity and method fit available data, decision needs, interpretability, and accuracy trade-offs.

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Time Series Forecasting Using Foundation Models

Time-series forecasting is the task of predicting future values of a variable or collection of variables indexed over time.

How it is used
Deploys reusable or adapted models to predict future time-indexed values across forecasting, anomaly detection, and classification workflows.
How deep it goes
Explains zero-shot, prompt-based, and reprogrammed workflows, but stops short of a universally optimal model or complete benchmark.
Examples
Uses weekly store sales, daily blog visits, PromptCast, and models including TimeGPT, Chronos, Lag-Llama, Moirai, TimesFM, and Time-LLM.
What you can do after
Apply it via foundation models or LLM prompts, compare speed and performance, and select methods according to data, horizon, hardware, and resources.

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Related concepts

These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.