# M3 competition¶

## Problem description¶

The so called M-competitions are among the most popular forecasting competitions in the world, bringing together the best forecasters from both industry and academia. Their popularity stems from the proper comparison of many different state of the art algorithms, be it neural networks or classical statistical methods like ARIMA and from the fact, that there are usually thousands of different datasets which prevents contestants to fine-tune their algorithms for a specific case.

These competitions also tend to cause a lot of controversy in the forecasting world because most of the time, the simpler statistical methods outperform the more sophisticated ones, that are hot in the academia. As you can read in this paper, "After comparing the post-sample accuracy of popular ML methods with that of eight traditional statistical ones, we found that the former are dominated across both accuracy measures used and for all forecasting horizons examined. Moreover, we observed that their computational requirements are considerably greater than those of statistical methods".

TIM is built with deep statistical foundations focusing more on the fundamentals than the algorithm choice. See How it works section to learn more about the TIM Forecasting. This template will guide you through the third M-competition M3 with 3003 different datasets and will show you how to use TIM to outperform competing methods in a fully automatic mode.

## Data recommendation template¶

Sampling Period Micro Industry Macro Finance Demographic Other Total
Yearly 146 102 83 58 245 11 645
Quarterly 204 83 336 76 57 756
Monthly 474 334 312 145 111 52 1428
Other 4 29 141 174
Total 828 519 731 308 413 204 3003

The task was to use all the data available but the last n observations and forecast those subsequently. n differs across the sampling rates.

We will describe in more detail the modeling of one specific dataset, namely N 2792.This dataset is sampled monthly and the task is to forecast 18 samples ahead.

## TIM setup¶

We will run TIM in a fully automatic mode.

## Demo using Python API Client¶

### Set up Python Libraries¶

In [1]:
import logging
import pandas as pd
import plotly as plt
import plotly.express as px
import plotly.graph_objects as go
import numpy as np
import json

import tim_client


### Credentials and logging¶

###### (Do not forget to fill in your credentials in the credentials.json file)¶
In [2]:
with open('credentials.json') as f:

TIM_URL = 'https://timws.tangent.works/v4/api'          # URL to which the requests are sent

SAVE_JSON = False                                       # if True - JSON requests and responses are saved to JSON_SAVING_FOLDER
JSON_SAVING_FOLDER = 'logs/'                            # folder where the requests and responses are stored

LOGGING_LEVEL = 'INFO'

In [3]:
level = logging.getLevelName(LOGGING_LEVEL)
logging.basicConfig(level=level, format='[%(levelname)s] %(asctime)s - %(name)s:%(funcName)s:%(lineno)s - %(message)s')
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

In [4]:
credentials = tim_client.Credentials(credentials_json['license_key'], credentials_json['email'], credentials_json['password'], tim_url=TIM_URL)
api_client = tim_client.ApiClient(credentials)

api_client.save_json = SAVE_JSON
api_client.json_saving_folder_path = JSON_SAVING_FOLDER

[INFO] 2020-11-06 13:06:57,197 - tim_client.api_client:save_json:74 - Saving JSONs functionality has been disabled
[INFO] 2020-11-06 13:06:57,201 - tim_client.api_client:json_saving_folder_path:89 - JSON destination folder changed to logs


### Specify configuration¶

To let TIM know that we want to forecast 18 samples ahead we can set the "prediction to" to 18 samples. Model will be built using a range between 1921-01 – 1927-06. Out-of-sample forecasts are made on the rest - from 1927-07 – 1928-12. (the last 18 samples). To get better insights from our model we will also want extended importance.

In [5]:
configuration_backtest = {
'usage': {
'predictionTo': {
'baseUnit': 'Sample',              # units that are used for specifying the prediction horizon length (one of 'Day', 'Hour', 'QuarterHour', 'Sample')
'offset': 18                       # number of units we want to predict into the future (24 hours in this case)
},
'backtestLength': 18                   # number of samples that are used for backtesting (note that these samples are excluded from model building period)
},
"predictionIntervals": {
"confidenceLevel": 90                  # confidence level of the prediction intervals (in %)
},
'extendedOutputConfiguration': {
'returnExtendedImportances': True      # flag that specifies if the importances of features are returned in the response
}
}


### Data description¶

Dataset used in this example has monthly sampling period and contains data from 1921-01 to 1928-12.

#### Target¶

Target variable are anonymized values and are categorized as other in the M3 competition.

#### Predictor candidates¶

No predictors included.

### Timestamp¶

Timestamp is the first column and each value of the timestamp is the beginning of the period it corresponds to i.e. row with timestamp 1921-01 corresponds to the whole period between 1921-01 and 1921-02.

#### Forecasting scenario¶

In this example we will simulate an 18 samples-ahead scenario.

In [6]:
data = tim_client.load_dataset_from_csv_file('N2792.csv', sep=';')                                 # loading data from data.csv
data                                                                                               # quick look at the data

Out[6]:
timestamp target
0 1921-01 4800
1 1921-02 3640
2 1921-03 5000
3 1921-04 5960
4 1921-05 7760
... ... ...
91 1928-08 9480
92 1928-09 8080
93 1928-10 6400
94 1928-11 5400
95 1928-12 3680

96 rows × 2 columns

### Run TIM¶

In [7]:
backtest = api_client.prediction_build_model_predict(data, configuration_backtest)                 # running the RTInstantML forecasting using data and defined configuration
backtest.status                                                                                    # status of the job

Out[7]:
'Finished'

### Visualize backtesting¶

In [8]:
fig = plt.subplots.make_subplots(rows=1, cols=1, shared_xaxes=True, vertical_spacing=0.02)      # plot initialization

fig.add_trace(go.Scatter(x = data.loc[:, "timestamp"], y=data.loc[:, "target"],
name = "target", line=dict(color='black')), row=1, col=1)              # plotting the target variable

y = backtest.prediction.loc[:, 'Prediction'],
name = "production forecast",
line = dict(color='purple')), row=1, col=1)                            # plotting production prediction

y = backtest.aggregated_predictions[0]['values'].loc[:, 'Prediction'],
name = "in-sample MAPE: " + str(round(backtest.aggregated_predictions[0]['accuracyMetrics']['MAPE'], 2)),
line=dict(color='goldenrod')), row=1, col=1)                           # plotting in-sample prediction