Forecasting overview
Forecasting is a technique where you analyze historical data in order to make an informed prediction about future trends. For example, you might analyze historical sales data from several store locations in order to predict future sales at those locations. In BigQuery ML, you perform forecasting on time series data.
You can perform forecasting by using the
ML.FORECAST function
with the
ARIMA_PLUS model
to forecast future values for a single variable, and with the
ARIMA_PLUS_XREG model
to forecast future values for multiple variables.
A time series model isn't actually a single model, but rather a time series modeling pipeline that includes multiple models and algorithms. For more information, see Time series modeling pipeline.