Revisiting the Holt-Winters' Additive Method for Better Forecasting

Abstract

Time series are one of the most common data types encountered by data scientists and, in the context of today's exponentially increasing data, learning how to best model them to derive meaningful insights is an important skill in the Big Data and Data Science toolbox. As a result, many researchers have dedicated their efforts to developing time series analysis methods to predict future values based on previously observed values. One of the well-known methods is the Holt-Winters' seasonal method, which is commonly used to capture the seasonality effect in time series data. In this study, the authors aim to build upon the Holt-Winters' additive method by introducing new formulas for finding the initial values. Obtaining more accurate estimations of the initial values could result in a better forecasting result. The authors use the basic principle found in the weighted moving average method to assign more weight to the most recent data and combine it with the original initial conditions found in the Holt-Winters' additive method. Based on the experiment performed, the authors conclude that the new formulas for finding the initial values in the Holt-Winters' additive method could give a better forecasting when compared to the traditional Holt-Winters' additive method and the weighted moving average method in terms of the accuracy level.