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.