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I'm no time series expert, but from my experience and what I've heard, using Prophet for time series forecasting isn't recommended. It often leads to less-than-

I'm no time series expert, but from my experience and what I've heard, using Prophet for time series forecasting isn't recommended. It often leads to less-than-ideal results. Curiously, in Medium-like (ie low effort) publications it's still the recommended way to tackle a forecasting problem. The promise of a model that can solve any time series problem sounds great, but not all that glitters is gold, and as you get more experience you discover that solutions like this usually don't work.

wendyshu 3y ago
Isn't recommended by whom?
- alexmolas 3y ago
  Every time I, or someone at work with more experience than me, have tried Prophet it has ended up in changing the approach and trying a different technique. In my experience with time series hand-crafted recipes tend to work much more better than out-of-the-box solutions.
  - techwizrd 3y ago
    I agree completely. We always end up moving away from Prophet every time. The results from Prophet are just not very good, although it can be useful for a proof-of-concept.
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    What do you instead? I think Prophet does get close to an answer that isn't "depends" like everyone else is suggesting as an alternative
braza 3y ago
I used Prophet and personally I do not have any problems, but I agree with the criticism that the tool it’s extremely focused in ergonomics that abstracts important aspects of the tool that can be used to built better models [1]. [1] - https://ryxcommar.com/2021/11/06/zillow-prophet-time-series-and-prices/ https://ryxcommar.com/2021/11/06/zillow-prophet-time-series-...
- elesiuta 3y ago
  I thought the biggest issue wasn't with the models themselves, but how Zillow decided to apply and act on them, which is why it didn't work in practice. So on average their predictions may have been pretty good, but since each transaction also depends on the other party to accept their offer, and whether they get outbid, most of their predictions where the offer actually goes through would be on the tail end of where they slightly overestimated the price. This tweet from the article summed it up nicely > Zillow made the same mistake that every new quant trader makes early on: Mistaking an adversarial environment for a random one. https://twitter.com/0xdoug/status/1456032851477028870 https://twitter.com/0xdoug/status/1456032851477028870 I was lucky to make and learn from that mistake pretty quickly with some algorithmic trading on much smaller amounts. With housing transactions being much larger and slower, you wouldn't learn this lesson until it was too late. Models never perform as well in practice as they do in theory, and you need to remember to account for both known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
  - GraceCat123 3y ago
    Great comments! I've learned a lot from them. I'm just getting started with algorithmic trading and time series modeling, so I appreciate your insights.
pantsforbirds 3y ago
I've honestly had consistently better results with standard regression models. I really love the idea of it, and maybe I need to be tuning it better somehow, but overall I haven't had a great experience.

wendyshu 3y ago

Isn't recommended by whom?

alexmolas 3y ago
Every time I, or someone at work with more experience than me, have tried Prophet it has ended up in changing the approach and trying a different technique. In my experience with time series hand-crafted recipes tend to work much more better than out-of-the-box solutions.
- techwizrd 3y ago
  I agree completely. We always end up moving away from Prophet every time. The results from Prophet are just not very good, although it can be useful for a proof-of-concept.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  What do you instead? I think Prophet does get close to an answer that isn't "depends" like everyone else is suggesting as an alternative

braza 3y ago

I used Prophet and personally I do not have any problems, but I agree with the criticism that the tool it’s extremely focused in ergonomics that abstracts important aspects of the tool that can be used to built better models [1]. [1] - https://ryxcommar.com/2021/11/06/zillow-prophet-time-series-and-prices/ https://ryxcommar.com/2021/11/06/zillow-prophet-time-series-...

elesiuta 3y ago
I thought the biggest issue wasn't with the models themselves, but how Zillow decided to apply and act on them, which is why it didn't work in practice. So on average their predictions may have been pretty good, but since each transaction also depends on the other party to accept their offer, and whether they get outbid, most of their predictions where the offer actually goes through would be on the tail end of where they slightly overestimated the price. This tweet from the article summed it up nicely > Zillow made the same mistake that every new quant trader makes early on: Mistaking an adversarial environment for a random one. https://twitter.com/0xdoug/status/1456032851477028870 https://twitter.com/0xdoug/status/1456032851477028870 I was lucky to make and learn from that mistake pretty quickly with some algorithmic trading on much smaller amounts. With housing transactions being much larger and slower, you wouldn't learn this lesson until it was too late. Models never perform as well in practice as they do in theory, and you need to remember to account for both known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
- GraceCat123 3y ago
  Great comments! I've learned a lot from them. I'm just getting started with algorithmic trading and time series modeling, so I appreciate your insights.

pantsforbirds 3y ago

I've honestly had consistently better results with standard regression models. I really love the idea of it, and maybe I need to be tuning it better somehow, but overall I haven't had a great experience.