Time Series - Honours

Time series consist of values of a variable recorded in an order over a period of time. Such data arise in just about every area of science and the humanities, including econometrics and finance, engineering, medicine, genetics, sociology, environmental science. What makes time series data special is the presence of dependence between observations in a series, and the fact that usually only one observation is made at any given point in time. This means that standard statistical methods are not appropriate, and special methods for statistical analysis are needed. This course provides an introduction to time series analysis using current methodology and software.

Topics covered are: descriptive methods, plots, smoothing, differencing; the autocorrelation function, the correlogram and variogram, the periodogram; estimation and elimination of trend and seasonal components; stationary processes, modelling and forecasting with autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models; spectral analysis, the fast Fourier transform, periodogram averages and other smooth estimates of the spectrum; time-invariant linear filters; non-stationary and seasonal time series models; ARIMA processes, identification, estimation and diagnostic checking, forecasting, including extrapolation of polynomial trends, exponential smoothing, and the Box-Jenkins approach.