Q1. You are working with the AirPassengers dataset in R, which contains monthly airline
passenger numbers from 1949 to 1960. How can you use R to create a time series forecast for the
next year?
[10 Marks] [CO2, L5]



Answer :

To create a time series forecast for the AirPassengers dataset in R for the next year, you can follow these steps: 1. Load the necessary libraries: You'll need to load libraries that provide functions for time series analysis and forecasting. Two common libraries are `forecast` and `tseries`. ```r install.packages("forecast") install.packages("tseries") library(forecast) library(tseries) ``` 2. Load the dataset: The AirPassengers dataset is a standard dataset available in R. You can load it directly using the `data()` function. ```r data(AirPassengers) ``` 3. Convert the dataset to a time series object: To perform time series analysis, the data must be in the form of a time series object. For the AirPassengers data, the frequency is 12 because there are 12 observations per year (monthly data), and the start of the series is January 1949. ```r ts_data <- ts(AirPassengers, frequency = 12, start = c(1949, 1)) ``` 4. Model fitting: You can automatically fit an appropriate ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) model using the `auto.arima()` function from the `forecast` package, which will find the best model for the series. ```r fit <- auto.arima(ts_data) ``` 5. Forecasting: Use the `forecast()` function to predict future values. For a one-year forecast, you can set `h = 12` to forecast the next 12 months. ```r forecast_values <- forecast(fit, h = 12) ``` 6. Plot the forecast: Visualize the forecasted values along with the original time series data to get a graphical representation of the forecast. ```r plot(forecast_values) ``` 7. Review the forecast: Check the summary of the forecast which provides additional information such as point forecasts, confidence intervals, and model coefficients. ```r summary(forecast_values) ``` This series of steps should give you a forecast for the AirPassengers data for the next year. You can use this forecast to analyze trends and make decisions based on the predicted passenger numbers. Remember that while the `auto.arima()` function provides a robust starting point for forecasting, you may want to consider additional models or fine-tuning to improve forecast accuracy based on domain knowledge or additional data.

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