ARIMA & ETS target fields

[cltccross]

Hi folks,

I'm doing some very basic time-series forecasting using ARIMA & ETS, just to get a hang of the tools. I'm however getting errors with execution halts. On the configuration target, I'm also unable to select fields other than 'Record ID'. I might be doing something silly here, so any bit of help would be great!

[DataNath · Accepted solution]

Hey @cltccross, I’m not at my laptop right now so can’t really check the workflow. However, not being able to select any other fields will likely mean that they’re currently strings (or other data types) as ARIMA/ETS will only accept numeric data types so make sure - with a Select tool perhaps - that your incoming target fields are numeric. In terms of the error in the image, off the top of my head I think you ought to also ensure you don’t have any null or missing values in the target field. You may want to interpolate data using an average or previous value etc to fill any gaps.

[JamesCharnley]

Hi @cltccross 

@DataNath  is absolutely correct and the reason you can't see the fields in the TS tools is they're coming in as strings, and if you want to predict them they need to be numeric.

Additionally, the input isn't included in your .yxmd so I'm guessing just off tools and metadata here, but just make sure that your data is aggregated to the correct level before being plugged into the TS tools (same as your target frequency).

I found the Time Series branch of the Data Science learning pathway quite helpful when trying to learn the Time Series tools:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Learning-Paths/Data-Science-Learning-Path/ta-p/504157

[cltccross]

@DataNath Thanks. That really worked. All of them were set as strings!

[cltccross]

@JamesCharnley Yes, the solution was right! Thank you for the additional content. I missed out on attaching the document, my bad.