Trend analysis is the widespread practice of collecting information and attempting to spot a pattern. In some fields of study, the term has more formally defined meanings.
Although trend analysis is often used to predict future events, it could be used to estimate uncertain events in the past, such as how many ancient kings probably ruled between two dates, based on data such as the average years which other known kings reigned.
Project management
In
project management
Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. T ...
, trend analysis is a mathematical technique that uses historical results to predict future outcome. This is achieved by tracking variances in cost and schedule performance. In this context, it is a project management quality control tool.
Statistics
In
statistics
Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, indust ...
, trend analysis often refers to techniques for extracting an underlying pattern of behavior in a
time series
In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Ex ...
which would otherwise be partly or nearly completely hidden by
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...
. If the
trend can be assumed to be linear, trend analysis can be undertaken within a formal
regression analysis
In statistical modeling, regression analysis is a set of statistical processes for estimating the relationships between a dependent variable (often called the 'outcome' or 'response' variable, or a 'label' in machine learning parlance) and one ...
, as described in
Trend estimation. If the trends have other shapes than linear, trend testing can be done by non-parametric methods, e.g. Mann-Kendall test, which is a version of
Kendall rank correlation coefficient
In statistics, the Kendall rank correlation coefficient, commonly referred to as Kendall's τ coefficient (after the Greek letter τ, tau), is a statistic used to measure the ordinal association between two measured quantities. A τ test is a n ...
.
Smoothing can also be used for testing and visualization of nonlinear trends.
Text
Trend analysis can be also used for word usage, how words change in the frequency of use in time (diachronic analysis), in order to find
neologisms
A neologism Ancient_Greek.html"_;"title="_from_Ancient_Greek">Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"is_a_relatively_recent_or_isolated_term,_word,_or_phrase_that_may_be_in_the_process_of_entering_com ...
or
archaisms. It relates to
diachronic linguistics, a field of linguistics which examines how languages change over time. Google provides tool
Google Trends
Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top web search query, search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time. ...
to explore how particular terms are trending in internet searches. On the other hand, there are tools which provide diachronic analysis for particular texts which compare word usage in each period of the particular text (based on
timestamped marks), see e.g.
Sketch Engine
Sketch Engine is a corpus manager and text analysis software developed by Lexical Computing CZ s.r.o. since 2003. Its purpose is to enable people studying language behaviour ( lexicographers, researchers in corpus linguistics, translators or lan ...
diachronic analysis (trends).
[
]
See also
*
Cool-hunting
*
Extrapolation
In mathematics, extrapolation is a type of estimation, beyond the original observation range, of the value of a variable on the basis of its relationship with another variable. It is similar to interpolation, which produces estimates between know ...
*
Horizon scanning
*
Technology forecasting
Technology forecasting attempts to predict the future characteristics of useful technological machines, procedures or techniques. Researchers create technology forecasts based on past experience and current technological developments. Like other ...
*
Weather forecasting
Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th cen ...
Notes
External links
Trend Analysis in Polls, Topics, Opinions and AnswersMegatrends and connected trends download files
Regression with time series structure
Research methods
Project management techniques
Futures techniques
{{business-stub