For this week’s discussion I’ve chosen to elaborate on the fascinating possibilities and appeal of

temporal charts in timeseries modeling.

Also, working in the financial sector I’d like to reflect on the day to salience or relevance of temporal
charts or graphs in many presentations and data visualization projects.

Temporal or time series modeling have been the crux of any behavioral pattern analysis or for
evaluating the performance of key metrics in a field of study. Timeseries analysis are relevant across all
walks of life viz., finance, medical, sales, marketing, inventory and weather forecasting (Desikan, P., &
Srivastava, J., n.d.). A well modelled time series analysis coupled with rigorous data mining techniques
produces nearly accurate extrapolation for future trends which is most lucrative for businesses or
organizations to leverage on with appropriate managerial decisions.

Mandelbrot, Benoit, a pioneer in fractal geometry popularized the importance of time series modeling
and by introducing a 4th dimension between 1D and 2D termed as the fractal dimension estimated by
the hurst parameter (which usually takes a value between 0 & 0.5) (H.E. Hurst, 1951)

Before we dwell into the mechanics of how Mandelbrot influenced timeseries modeling or temporal
analysis with chaos theory in risk rewards and finance, lets talk about the different types of temporal
charts.

There are 7 popular types of temporal charts (Bethany, 2019), viz.,

i) Line Graph – Which is the crudest or simplest chart type to represent any set of data points
over time with a well distributed scale.
ii) Stacked area chart – A chart type that can accommodate time series analysis of multiple
attributes and possibly its correlation with each other.
iii) Bar charts – A convenient chart type to show discrete variance of an attribute or metric over
a period. Also, with bar like area charts you can include multiple attributes grouped in
periods.
iv) Gantt Charts – A simple representation of progress or measurement of a project or attribute
over time with respect to resources allocated.
v) Stream Graph – This chart type is comparatively complex to interpret with the other chart
types. It is visually an area chart displaced around a horizontal axis with a center for
reference.
vi) Heatmaps – Most commonly used visualization techniques to depict impact of an attribute
with a correlating parameter. This visualization technique can help explore two levels of
time series data in a 2D array
vii) Polar Area Diagram – An aptly designed visualization technique for data points which are
cyclical or repetitive in nature over certain time intervals like seasonal data or crop outputs
and so on. Interesting snippet, the most commonly referenced example of Polar chart is that
of Florence Nightingale depicting the mortality rate of the British troops in the Crimean War
(Nightingale, F., 1858).

Coming back to fractal analysis of timeseries modeling, while linear regression and line chart analysis
of timeseries data was being mainstream among researchers, Mandelbrot introduced the
amalgamation of time series modeling with fractal geometry which gave rise to the concept of
finding patterns within patterns over irregularly distributed time intervals. In the financial sector we
its widely believed that patterns exist only until exploited but Madelbrot’s chaos theory proves that
despite our best efforts these patterns are recurring in uneven time distributions which can
depicted with a temporal chart. (Mandelbrot, B., 1963)

References:

Bethany. (2019, August 07). Visualizing Time Series Data: 7 Types of Temporal Visualizations - Atlan:
Humans of Data. Retrieved from https://humansofdata.atlan.com/2016/11/visualizing-time-series-
data/

Desikan, P., & Srivastava, J. (n.d.). Time Series Analysis and Forecasting Methods for Temporal ...
Retrieved from https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~desikan/publications/TR-2003-120.pdf

H.E. Hurst, 1951, “Long-term storage of reservoirs: an experimental study,” Transactions of the
American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. 116, pp. 770-799.

Nightingale, F., 1858. Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration
of the British Army. Founded Chiefly on the Experience of the Late War. Presented by Request to the
Secretary of State for War. Privately printed for Miss Nightingale, Harrison and Sons

Mandelbrot, B. The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices, The Journal of Business, 1963, 36, 394-
419.