Prophet

Prophet is an open-source time series forecasting model developed by Facebook (Meta). It is designed to make accurate and interpretable forecasts for data that follows a seasonal trend, such as sales. It is based on additive regression models and does not use deep learning or neural networks, so it is classified as a machine learning model rather than an AI model.

Prophet: How It Works?

Prophet is based on a generalized additive model (GAM) that decomposes time series into three components:

• Trend – The long-term increase or decrease in the data.
• Seasonality – Periodic patterns (daily, weekly, yearly).
• Holidays/Events – Special dates that affect the trend (e.g., Christmas sales spike).

Prophet is designed to handle missing data and outliers better than traditional statistical models like ARIMA.

Why Use Prophet?

✅ Handles missing data & outliers automatically

✅ Works with yearly, weekly, and daily seasonality

✅ Easier to use than ARIMA or LSTMs (Deep Learning)

✅ Allows adding holidays & special events

✅ Good for short & long-term forecasting