The ARIMA Procedure

 
Specifying Series Periodicity

The INTERVAL= option is used together with the ID= variable to describe the observations that make up the time series. For example, INTERVAL=MONTH specifies a monthly time series in which each observation represents one month. See Chapter 4, Date Intervals, Formats, and Functions, for details about the interval values supported.

The variable specified by the ID= option in the PROC ARIMA statement identifies the time periods associated with the observations. Usually, SAS date, time, or datetime values are used for this variable. PROC ARIMA uses the ID= variable in the following ways:

  • to validate the data periodicity. When the INTERVAL= option is specified, PROC ARIMA uses the ID variable to check the data and verify that successive observations have valid ID values that correspond to successive time intervals. When the INTERVAL= option is not used, PROC ARIMA verifies that the ID values are nonmissing and in ascending order.

  • to check for gaps in the input observations. For example, if INTERVAL=MONTH and an input observation for April 1970 follows an observation for January 1970, there is a gap in the input data with two omitted observations (namely February and March 1970). A warning message is printed when a gap in the input data is found.

  • to label the forecast observations in the output data set. PROC ARIMA extrapolates the values of the ID variable for the forecast observations from the ID value at the end of the input data according to the frequency specifications of the INTERVAL= option. If the INTERVAL= option is not specified, PROC ARIMA extrapolates the ID variable by incrementing the ID variable value for the last observation in the input data by 1 for each forecast period. Values of the ID variable over the range of the input data are copied to the output data set.

The ALIGN= option is used to align the ID variable to the beginning, middle, or end of the time ID interval specified by the INTERVAL= option.