Importance of Forecasting
Many companies utilize forecasts to help estimate future performance, whether that is future sales and earnings for a retail company, forecasting weather patterns for airlines or tourism, or helping to decide a marketing budget for the next fiscal year. An accurate forecast can be the difference between exceeding expectations and struggling to stay afloat. There are many methods and ways to develop a forecast. Some can take a large effort to effectively tune the forecast and provide an accurate output. Some are relatively easy to develop but lack in accuracy. This article will talk about a Python and R package developed by Facebook called Prophet that falls in the middle of those two.