Forecasts for ARIMA

Minitab displays the period when you generate forecasts. The period is the time unit of the forecast. By default, the forecasts start at the end of the data.

The forecasts are the fitted values obtained from the time series model. Minitab displays the number of forecasts that you specify. The forecasts begin either at the end of the data or at the point of origin that you specify.

Use forecasts to predict a variable for a specified period of time. For example, a warehouse manager can model how much product to order for the next 3 months based on the previous 60 months of orders.

The lower and upper prediction limits produce a prediction interval for each forecast. The prediction interval is a range of likely values of forecasts. For example, with a 95% prediction interval, you can be 95% confident that the prediction interval contains the forecast at the specified time.