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Summary
I eat an apple almost every day. Not to keep up with any proverb about doctors, but because I just really like apples. I enjoy crunching into a crisp, fresh apple with my lunch. This means I probably eat over 300 apples a year assuming I eat 6/wk. That totals close to 100 pounds of apples a year. That's a lot of apple (and doesn't even take into count when I use them to bake even tastier things).
While I chomped through yet another apple recently, I wondered about the fluctuations, or lack thereof, in their price and availability (especially as it's the thick of winter and I have continued to see 99 cents/pounds signs occasionally at the local grocer). So I decided to look into it and here you are - an analysis of monthly apples prices from 1980 to 2010.
I use both an ARIMA model and an SVR model to examine and predict apple prices over time, while considering other possible factors as well.
This Python code was written using Python 2.7 and Numpy 1.5.1, but should be compatible with many other versions. The user may have to install the matplotlib and pylab packages.
Author: RWK
License: None, free to use and edit as people wish.
Contact: May be made through GitHub.