MLS-C01 · Question #309
A machine learning (ML) specialist at a retail company must build a system to forecast the daily sales for one of the company's stores. The company provided the ML specialist with sales data for this
The correct answer is D. Replace missing values in the dataset by using linear interpolation.. A daily sales forecasting model underperforms due to 10% missing values in historical data, and performance needs improvement.
Question
A machine learning (ML) specialist at a retail company must build a system to forecast the daily sales for one of the company's stores. The company provided the ML specialist with sales data for this store from the past 10 years. The historical dataset includes the total amount of sales on each day for the store. Approximately 10% of the days in the historical dataset are missing sales data. The ML specialist builds a forecasting model based on the historical dataset. The specialist discovers that the model does not meet the performance standards that the company requires. Which action will MOST likely improve the performance for the forecasting model?
Options
- AAggregate sales from stores in the same geographic area.
- BApply smoothing to correct for seasonal variation.
- CChange the forecast frequency from daily to weekly.
- DReplace missing values in the dataset by using linear interpolation.
How the community answered
(49 responses)- A14% (7)
- B4% (2)
- C8% (4)
- D73% (36)
Why each option
A daily sales forecasting model underperforms due to 10% missing values in historical data, and performance needs improvement.
Aggregating sales from other stores might introduce irrelevant patterns or noise, potentially making the model less accurate for forecasting sales specifically for the target store.
Applying smoothing for seasonal variation is a valid time series technique, but it does not address the fundamental issue of 10% missing data, which is a more critical problem impacting model performance.
Changing the forecast frequency to weekly reduces granularity and does not directly resolve the problem of missing daily data, which can still affect weekly aggregates or the ability to forecast at a desired frequency.
Missing values in time series data disrupt continuity and hinder a model's ability to learn accurate patterns and trends, leading to poor forecasting performance. Replacing these missing sales values using linear interpolation or other imputation methods creates a complete dataset, which is crucial for the model to effectively capture the underlying temporal dynamics and significantly improve its accuracy.
Concept tested: Missing data imputation in time series
Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/machine-learning/v1/how-to-prepare-data#clean-missing-values
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