ETS models

The ETS models are a family of time series models with an underlying state space model consisting of a level component, a trend component (T), a seasonal component (S), and an error term (E).

This notebook shows how they can be used with statsmodels. For a more thorough treatment we refer to [1], chapter 8 (free online resource), on which the implementation in statsmodels and the examples used in this notebook are based.

statsmodels implements all combinations of: - additive and multiplicative error model - additive and multiplicative trend, possibly dampened - additive and multiplicative seasonality

However, not all of these methods are stable. Refer to [1] and references therein for more info about model stability.

[1] Hyndman, Rob J., and Athanasopoulos, George. Forecasting: principles and practice, 3rd edition, OTexts, 2021. https://otexts.com/fpp3/expsmooth.html

[1]:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd

%matplotlib inline
from statsmodels.tsa.exponential_smoothing.ets import ETSModel
np.random.seed(1234) # for reproducibility
[2]:
plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = (12, 8)

Simple exponential smoothing

The simplest of the ETS models is also known as simple exponential smoothing. In ETS terms, it corresponds to the (A, N, N) model, that is, a model with additive errors, no trend, and no seasonality. The state space formulation of Holt’s method is:

\begin{align} y_{t} &= y_{t-1} + e_t\\ l_{t} &= l_{t-1} + \alpha e_t\\ \end{align}

This state space formulation can be turned into a different formulation, a forecast and a smoothing equation (as can be done with all ETS models):

\begin{align} \hat{y}_{t|t-1} &= l_{t-1}\\ l_{t} &= \alpha y_{t-1} + (1 - \alpha) l_{t-1} \end{align}

Here, \(\hat{y}_{t|t-1}\) is the forecast/expectation of \(y_t\) given the information of the previous step. In the simple exponential smoothing model, the forecast corresponds to the previous level. The second equation (smoothing equation) calculates the next level as weighted average of the previous level and the previous observation.

[3]:
oildata = [
    111.0091,
    130.8284,
    141.2871,
    154.2278,
    162.7409,
    192.1665,
    240.7997,
    304.2174,
    384.0046,
    429.6622,
    359.3169,
    437.2519,
    468.4008,
    424.4353,
    487.9794,
    509.8284,
    506.3473,
    340.1842,
    240.2589,
    219.0328,
    172.0747,
    252.5901,
    221.0711,
    276.5188,
    271.1480,
    342.6186,
    428.3558,
    442.3946,
    432.7851,
    437.2497,
    437.2092,
    445.3641,
    453.1950,
    454.4096,
    422.3789,
    456.0371,
    440.3866,
    425.1944,
    486.2052,
    500.4291,
    521.2759,
    508.9476,
    488.8889,
    509.8706,
    456.7229,
    473.8166,
    525.9509,
    549.8338,
    542.3405,
]
oil = pd.Series(oildata, index=pd.date_range("1965", "2013", freq="YS"))
oil.plot()
plt.ylabel("Annual oil production in Saudi Arabia (Mt)")
[3]:
Text(0, 0.5, 'Annual oil production in Saudi Arabia (Mt)')
../../../_images/examples_notebooks_generated_ets_4_1.png

The plot above shows annual oil production in Saudi Arabia in million tonnes. The data are taken from the R package fpp2 (companion package to prior version [1]). Below you can see how to fit a simple exponential smoothing model using statsmodels’s ETS implementation to this data. Additionally, the fit using forecast in R is shown as comparison.

[4]:
model = ETSModel(oil)
fit = model.fit(maxiter=10000)
oil.plot(label="data")
fit.fittedvalues.plot(label="statsmodels fit")
plt.ylabel("Annual oil production in Saudi Arabia (Mt)")

# obtained from R
params_R = [0.99989969, 0.11888177503085334, 0.80000197, 36.46466837, 34.72584983]
yhat = model.smooth(params_R).fittedvalues
yhat.plot(label="R fit", linestyle="--")

plt.legend()
[4]:
<matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0xadde5de1e8ed>
../../../_images/examples_notebooks_generated_ets_6_1.png

By default the initial states are considered to be fitting parameters and are estimated by maximizing log-likelihood. It is possible to only use a heuristic for the initial values:

[5]:
model_heuristic = ETSModel(oil, initialization_method="heuristic")
fit_heuristic = model_heuristic.fit()
oil.plot(label="data")
fit.fittedvalues.plot(label="estimated")
fit_heuristic.fittedvalues.plot(label="heuristic", linestyle="--")
plt.ylabel("Annual oil production in Saudi Arabia (Mt)")

# obtained from R
params = [0.99989969, 0.11888177503085334, 0.80000197, 36.46466837, 34.72584983]
yhat = model.smooth(params).fittedvalues
yhat.plot(label="with R params", linestyle=":")

plt.legend()
[5]:
<matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0xadde5de1e8ed>
../../../_images/examples_notebooks_generated_ets_8_1.png

The fitted parameters and some other measures are shown using fit.summary(). Here we can see that the log-likelihood of the model using fitted initial states is fractionally lower than the one using a heuristic for the initial states.

[6]:
print(fit.summary())
                                 ETS Results
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable:                      y   No. Observations:                   49
Model:                       ETS(ANN)   Log Likelihood                -259.257
Date:                Sat, 05 Oct 2024   AIC                            524.514
Time:                        10:43:25   BIC                            530.189
Sample:                    01-01-1965   HQIC                           526.667
                         - 01-01-2013   Scale                         2307.767
Covariance Type:               approx
===================================================================================
                      coef    std err          z      P>|z|      [0.025      0.975]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
smoothing_level     0.9999      0.132      7.551      0.000       0.740       1.259
initial_level     110.7864     48.110      2.303      0.021      16.492     205.081
===================================================================================
Ljung-Box (Q):                        1.87   Jarque-Bera (JB):                20.78
Prob(Q):                              0.39   Prob(JB):                         0.00
Heteroskedasticity (H):               0.49   Skew:                            -1.04
Prob(H) (two-sided):                  0.16   Kurtosis:                         5.42
===================================================================================

Warnings:
[1] Covariance matrix calculated using numerical (complex-step) differentiation.
[7]:
print(fit_heuristic.summary())
                                 ETS Results
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable:                      y   No. Observations:                   49
Model:                       ETS(ANN)   Log Likelihood                -260.521
Date:                Sat, 05 Oct 2024   AIC                            525.042
Time:                        10:43:25   BIC                            528.826
Sample:                    01-01-1965   HQIC                           526.477
                         - 01-01-2013   Scale                         2429.964
Covariance Type:               approx
===================================================================================
                      coef    std err          z      P>|z|      [0.025      0.975]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
smoothing_level     0.9999      0.132      7.559      0.000       0.741       1.259
==============================================
              initialization method: heuristic
----------------------------------------------
initial_level                          33.6309
===================================================================================
Ljung-Box (Q):                        1.85   Jarque-Bera (JB):                18.42
Prob(Q):                              0.40   Prob(JB):                         0.00
Heteroskedasticity (H):               0.44   Skew:                            -1.02
Prob(H) (two-sided):                  0.11   Kurtosis:                         5.21
===================================================================================

Warnings:
[1] Covariance matrix calculated using numerical (complex-step) differentiation.

Holt-Winters’ seasonal method

The exponential smoothing method can be modified to incorporate a trend and a seasonal component. In the additive Holt-Winters’ method, the seasonal component is added to the rest. This model corresponds to the ETS(A, A, A) model, and has the following state space formulation:

\begin{align} y_t &= l_{t-1} + b_{t-1} + s_{t-m} + e_t\\ l_{t} &= l_{t-1} + b_{t-1} + \alpha e_t\\ b_{t} &= b_{t-1} + \beta e_t\\ s_{t} &= s_{t-m} + \gamma e_t \end{align}

[8]:
austourists_data = [
    30.05251300,
    19.14849600,
    25.31769200,
    27.59143700,
    32.07645600,
    23.48796100,
    28.47594000,
    35.12375300,
    36.83848500,
    25.00701700,
    30.72223000,
    28.69375900,
    36.64098600,
    23.82460900,
    29.31168300,
    31.77030900,
    35.17787700,
    19.77524400,
    29.60175000,
    34.53884200,
    41.27359900,
    26.65586200,
    28.27985900,
    35.19115300,
    42.20566386,
    24.64917133,
    32.66733514,
    37.25735401,
    45.24246027,
    29.35048127,
    36.34420728,
    41.78208136,
    49.27659843,
    31.27540139,
    37.85062549,
    38.83704413,
    51.23690034,
    31.83855162,
    41.32342126,
    42.79900337,
    55.70835836,
    33.40714492,
    42.31663797,
    45.15712257,
    59.57607996,
    34.83733016,
    44.84168072,
    46.97124960,
    60.01903094,
    38.37117851,
    46.97586413,
    50.73379646,
    61.64687319,
    39.29956937,
    52.67120908,
    54.33231689,
    66.83435838,
    40.87118847,
    51.82853579,
    57.49190993,
    65.25146985,
    43.06120822,
    54.76075713,
    59.83447494,
    73.25702747,
    47.69662373,
    61.09776802,
    66.05576122,
]
index = pd.date_range("1999-03-01", "2015-12-01", freq="3MS")
austourists = pd.Series(austourists_data, index=index)
austourists.plot()
plt.ylabel("Australian Tourists")
[8]:
Text(0, 0.5, 'Australian Tourists')
../../../_images/examples_notebooks_generated_ets_13_1.png
[9]:
# fit in statsmodels
model = ETSModel(
    austourists,
    error="add",
    trend="add",
    seasonal="add",
    damped_trend=True,
    seasonal_periods=4,
)
fit = model.fit()

# fit with R params
params_R = [
    0.35445427,
    0.03200749,
    0.39993387,
    0.97999997,
    24.01278357,
    0.97770147,
    1.76951063,
    -0.50735902,
    -6.61171798,
    5.34956637,
]
fit_R = model.smooth(params_R)

austourists.plot(label="data")
plt.ylabel("Australian Tourists")

fit.fittedvalues.plot(label="statsmodels fit")
fit_R.fittedvalues.plot(label="R fit", linestyle="--")
plt.legend()
[9]:
<matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0xadde5de1e8ed>
../../../_images/examples_notebooks_generated_ets_14_1.png
[10]:
print(fit.summary())
                                 ETS Results
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable:                      y   No. Observations:                   68
Model:                      ETS(AAdA)   Log Likelihood                -152.627
Date:                Sat, 05 Oct 2024   AIC                            327.254
Time:                        10:43:25   BIC                            351.668
Sample:                    03-01-1999   HQIC                           336.928
                         - 12-01-2015   Scale                            5.213
Covariance Type:               approx
======================================================================================
                         coef    std err          z      P>|z|      [0.025      0.975]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
smoothing_level        0.3398      0.111      3.070      0.002       0.123       0.557
smoothing_trend        0.0259      0.008      3.158      0.002       0.010       0.042
smoothing_seasonal     0.4010      0.080      5.041      0.000       0.245       0.557
damping_trend          0.9800        nan        nan        nan         nan         nan
initial_level         29.4435        nan        nan        nan         nan         nan
initial_trend          0.6147      0.392      1.567      0.117      -0.154       1.383
initial_seasonal.0    -3.4311        nan        nan        nan         nan         nan
initial_seasonal.1    -5.9555        nan        nan        nan         nan         nan
initial_seasonal.2   -11.4825        nan        nan        nan         nan         nan
initial_seasonal.3          0        nan        nan        nan         nan         nan
===================================================================================
Ljung-Box (Q):                        5.76   Jarque-Bera (JB):                 7.70
Prob(Q):                              0.67   Prob(JB):                         0.02
Heteroskedasticity (H):               0.46   Skew:                            -0.63
Prob(H) (two-sided):                  0.07   Kurtosis:                         4.05
===================================================================================

Warnings:
[1] Covariance matrix calculated using numerical (complex-step) differentiation.

Predictions

The ETS model can also be used for predicting. There are several different methods available: - forecast: makes out of sample predictions - predict: in sample and out of sample predictions - simulate: runs simulations of the statespace model - get_prediction: in sample and out of sample predictions, as well as prediction intervals

We can use them on our previously fitted model to predict from 2014 to 2020.

[11]:
pred = fit.get_prediction(start="2014", end="2020")
[12]:
df = pred.summary_frame(alpha=0.05)
df
[12]:
mean pi_lower pi_upper
2014-03-01 67.611079 63.136106 72.086052
2014-06-01 42.814792 38.339819 47.289765
2014-09-01 54.106485 49.631512 58.581457
2014-12-01 57.928330 53.453357 62.403303
2015-03-01 68.422076 63.947103 72.897049
2015-06-01 47.277848 42.802875 51.752821
2015-09-01 58.954777 54.479804 63.429750
2015-12-01 63.982232 59.507259 68.457205
2016-03-01 75.905347 71.430375 80.380320
2016-06-01 51.418180 46.654074 56.182286
2016-09-01 63.703395 58.629492 68.777297
2016-12-01 67.978252 62.575913 73.380591
2017-03-01 78.315953 71.735941 84.895964
2017-06-01 53.780573 46.883627 60.677519
2017-09-01 66.018540 58.788440 73.248639
2017-12-01 70.247094 62.668985 77.825204
2018-03-01 80.539418 71.892949 89.185887
2018-06-01 55.959569 46.968469 64.950669
2018-09-01 68.153956 58.805453 77.502460
2018-12-01 72.339802 62.622126 82.057479
2019-03-01 82.590272 71.864943 93.315601
2019-06-01 57.969406 46.876169 69.062643
2019-09-01 70.123596 58.652329 81.594864
2019-12-01 74.270050 62.411396 86.128703
2020-03-01 84.481914 71.656584 97.307244

In this case the prediction intervals were calculated using an analytical formula. This is not available for all models. For these other models, prediction intervals are calculated by performing multiple simulations (1000 by default) and using the percentiles of the simulation results. This is done internally by the get_prediction method.

We can also manually run simulations, e.g. to plot them. Since the data ranges until end of 2015, we have to simulate from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2020, which means 17 steps.

[13]:
simulated = fit.simulate(anchor="end", nsimulations=17, repetitions=100)
[14]:
for i in range(simulated.shape[1]):
    simulated.iloc[:, i].plot(label="_", color="gray", alpha=0.1)
df["mean"].plot(label="mean prediction")
df["pi_lower"].plot(linestyle="--", color="tab:blue", label="95% interval")
df["pi_upper"].plot(linestyle="--", color="tab:blue", label="_")
pred.endog.plot(label="data")
plt.legend()
[14]:
<matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0xadde5de1e8ed>
../../../_images/examples_notebooks_generated_ets_21_1.png

In this case, we chose “end” as simulation anchor, which means that the first simulated value will be the first out of sample value. It is also possible to choose other anchor inside the sample.