These are not the usual defintions of AR, MA and ARMA models that I come across in time-series analysis texts (e.g Harvey, A. (1981): Time Series Models.)

I am used to seeing them specified as follows:

AR(p) model:

where ε_t is sampled from a normal distribution mean 0 and variance σ².

MA(q) model:

where the ε_t are normal and independent (that is GWN) and an ARMA(p,q) model specified as:

Richard Clegg

Well, these defns are identical to what's in the article at present, with epsilon and X instead of X and Y, right? The article doesn't say anything about assumptions about the distribution of the noise term (X or epsilon); I guess it should. I'm sure Gaussian noise is by far the most common assumption although I'd be surprised if other noise models haven't been investigated. I guess I think we should steer away from identifying AR or MA models with a particular noise distribution. For what it's worth, Wile E. Heresiarch 03:48, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Certainly I agree that what is given in the article is more general than what I wrote (with the brief fix -- thanks for that). But is it not sensible to stick to convention rather than give the most general model possible? When I hear talk of an AR model, I assume that the error sequence will be i.i.d. Gaussian zero mean. Any departure from that would be unusual would it not? I am very new to wikipedia so I don't know what is the common practice here. Do you agree that the notation above is more common (to use the epsilon rather than x) and to assume normally distributed i.i.d. errors? If so would you object to me rewriting the page slightly to use that notation and suggest that variants on the models could use different distributions for the innovations? To me, the ARIMA models imply normally distributed errors unless otherwise stated and certainly it would be very unusual not to have i.i.d. innovations (if the errors are not independent for example, the PACF for an AR will not be finite as discussed below.)

Another reason we might want to edit this is that the page for time series has a definition of an MA model on it specifying WN~(0,σ²) for the innovations so, currently the two pages are in conflict. However, as a newcomer, I don't want to press the point.

Richard Clegg

Richard, thanks for your comments, and thanks for taking the time to check in and test the waters -- always a useful habit I would say. I think you should go ahead and revise the article as you see fit to better address what is conventionally assumed about such models. I guess my only $0.02 would be to identify the conventional assumptions as such. Have at it! Regards & happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 05:22, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Updated as discussed. Thanks for the advice. I hope it meets your approval.

--Richard Clegg 14:16, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Could someone please add a discussion on the following topics?

• how an MA model has a finite autocorrelation sequence but an infinite partial autocorrelation sequence.
• how an AR model has an infinite autocorrelation sequence but a finite partial autocorrelation sequence.
• how ARMA has both infinite

I'm not sure how these things work and would like to see the math behind it.

thanks,

Mark Wilde

I notice that recent edits to this page are including the possibility of a non-zero mean. This is, of course, not a major issue but I think that we should really leave this out because it just complicates the notation without adding much. At the very least, if we are going to include the possibility of a non-zero mean we should including it consistently on AR, MA and ARMA models. I certainly favour leaving it out or leaving in a section to discuss it as it does not add anything much of value in my opinion. --Richard Clegg 17:01, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)