216. Summary

217. ETS taxonomy (state space form)

■ level ■ trend ■ seasonality

Each model has an observation equation (top, separated by a line) and state equations for each component plus a point-forecast formula. is the one-step-ahead innovation, assumed mean zero. is the seasonal period. picks the appropriate seasonal index for an -step-ahead forecast. Damped models use . Smoothing parameters .

Every one of the 30 cells gives you the same two-step pattern:

  1. Compute the innovation from the observation equation, solving for :

where is whatever the observation equation says equals when (i.e., the conditional mean).

  1. Update the states by plugging into the state equations.

That’s it. The same loop works for all 30 models — only the specific formulas for and the state updates change.

217.1. Trend = N (no trend)

217.2. Trend = A (additive trend)

217.3. Trend = Ad (damped additive trend)

217.4. Trend = M (multiplicative trend)

217.5. Trend = Md (damped multiplicative trend)

Model Name
ETS(A,N,N) Simple exponential smoothing
ETS(A,N,A) SES with additive seasonality
ETS(A,N,M) SES with multiplicative seasonality
ETS(A,A,N) Holt’s linear trend
ETS(A,A,A) Additive Holt-Winters
ETS(A,A,M) Holt-Winters with multiplicative seasonality
ETS(A,Ad,N) Damped linear trend
ETS(A,Ad,A) Damped additive Holt-Winters
ETS(A,Ad,M) Damped Holt-Winters with multiplicative seasonality
ETS(A,M,N) Multiplicative trend
ETS(A,M,A) Multiplicative trend with additive seasonality
ETS(A,M,M) Multiplicative trend and seasonality
ETS(A,Md,N) Damped multiplicative trend
ETS(A,Md,A) Damped multiplicative trend with additive seasonality
ETS(A,Md,M) Damped multiplicative trend and seasonality
ETS(M,N,N) SES with multiplicative errors
ETS(M,N,A) SES with additive seasonality, multiplicative errors
ETS(M,N,M) SES with multiplicative seasonality and errors
ETS(M,A,N) Holt’s linear trend with multiplicative errors
ETS(M,A,A) Additive Holt-Winters with multiplicative errors
ETS(M,A,M) Multiplicative Holt-Winters
ETS(M,Ad,N) Damped linear trend with multiplicative errors
ETS(M,Ad,A) Damped additive Holt-Winters with multiplicative errors
ETS(M,Ad,M) Damped multiplicative Holt-Winters
ETS(M,M,N) Multiplicative trend with multiplicative errors
ETS(M,M,A) Multiplicative trend, additive seasonality, multiplicative errors
ETS(M,M,M) Fully multiplicative
ETS(M,Md,N) Damped multiplicative trend with multiplicative errors
ETS(M,Md,A) Damped multiplicative trend, additive seasonality, mult. errors
ETS(M,Md,M) Fully multiplicative with damped trend

217.6. ETS (Exponential Smoothing)

ETS stands for Error, Trend, Seasonality — a family of forecasting models that decomposes a time series into up to three components and updates each one recursively from new observations.

217.6.1. The weighting-scheme axis

Before exponential smoothing, ask: how much should past observations count? Two extremes and two interpolators:

Naïve () and Cumulative () are the two extremes of a single “how much history counts” axis. MA sits between them with a finite equal-weight window; SES sits between them with infinite geometrically-decaying weights. The rest of this section builds on SES.