Time Baby

Gravity Falls Inspired Profiles in Analytics

Can I be honest? Time Baby freaks me the bleep out! Even more than the Big Floating Baby Head from Phineas & Ferb. He has all the freaky floating baby head plus a Charles Manson-esque forehead tattoo for added creepiness! He isn’t even funny… at least Bill gave us funny.

Of course any profile in analytics needs an antagonist that symbolizes time series (maybe more than one that symbolizes pattern recognition and cipher solving… sorry Bill). Time Baby fits the bill (pun intended). Time Baby arrived earlier in the series than our other villains. This is fitting as well, time series is often the first step in analytics (after some general profiling). There are so many aspects of this series that model analytics!

Time Baby/Series can be destructive!

Data changes with time and not always because the subject or point of observation did. It has an annoying habit of getting out of control. Technologies change. Collection protocols change. Formats change (they shouldn’t, but they do). Quickly, everything is a mess. Things start to look pretty bleak and often very unusual. Novice analysts first see patterns that don’t really exist, but eventually the realization comes that time has not been your friend.

On occasion, things get desperate enough that you may feel that time series is pitting you in a desperate battle… a proverbial gladiatorial event? Gravity Falls has a lot of fun with the time, Time Baby, time travel, and the like. Much of it is great analogy. All of it is an excellent learning exercise for our twin heroes. The same holds for aspiring analysts. Among them, the difficulty in altering time series, the out-sized impact of minor events when you do, and the value of acquiring a pet pig… ok, maybe not that one?!

Time Baby/Series has some strict rules!

Time Baby has an aggressive but mostly reactive police force. The Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron or Time Police make excellent analogies themselves. Time series doesn’t send muscle men named after Dolph Lundgren to your desk when you break the rules, but that might actually be nicer than the intellectual humiliation that often follows mistakes in obeying the ‘laws’ of time series analysis.

Like the Time Police in Gravity Falls, enforcement is not an upfront constraint. Enforcement comes after the violation and often with dire or at least humiliating consequences! Be very careful when using statistical models, projecting growth, over fitting and over analyzing data. Failure to account for time series rules may leave you… wet?

Thanks for reading! Only two more profiles remain! Here is a little clue to our next profile:

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