Key Observations from Historical Data

From our analysis of 2024 ride booking data:

• Stable Demand: Daily rides range from 355 to 462, with an average of 411 rides per day
• Minimal Overall Trend: Very slight decreasing trend (-0.01 rides/day) with R² = 0.003, indicating the data is relatively stable without strong directional movement
• Good for Forecasting: This stability suggests Prophet can focus on detecting seasonal patterns rather than dealing with dramatic trend changes

What Prophet Will Help Us Discover:

1. Weekly Seasonality: Are there patterns between weekdays and weekends?
2. Monthly/Yearly Patterns: Do certain times of year show higher demand?
3. Future Predictions: What should we expect for the next 60 days?
4. Uncertainty Estimates: How confident can we be in these predictions?

Now let's build our Prophet model!

How Prophet Breaks Down the Forecast

Prophet decomposes our ride booking predictions into several key components:

1. Trend (Green line in bottom chart)

• The underlying direction of the data over time
• Shows whether demand is generally increasing, decreasing, or stable
• Our data shows a very stable trend around 409 rides/day

2. Weekly Seasonality (Orange line)

• Day-of-week patterns - weekdays vs. weekends
• Captures whether certain days consistently have higher or lower demand
• Values around 0 suggest minimal weekly variation in our data

3. Yearly Seasonality (Purple line)

• Seasonal business cycles throughout the year
• Accounts for holidays, weather patterns, school schedules, etc.
• Shows how ride demand varies by time of year

4. Confidence Intervals (Red shaded area)

• The uncertainty range around our predictions
• 95% confidence means we're 95% sure actual values will fall in this range
• Wider intervals = more uncertainty, narrower = more confidence

Next, let's dive deeper into weekly patterns!