What exactly is a time series?

A time series is just a list of things that happen one after another over time.

Imagine you're keeping track of how many jellybeans you eat every day for a whole month. You write down the number on a piece of paper each night before bed. That list, your jellybean-eating journey from day to day, is a time series!

Think of it like a story, but instead of words, we use numbers. Each number has a special friend: the date. So on Monday you ate 3 jellybeans, and that’s one part of your time series. On Tuesday, maybe you had a big snack and ate 7 jellybeans, that becomes another part.

You can make a time series with almost anything: how many steps you take each day, how much rain falls every week, or even the temperature outside from morning to night!

If you plot your jellybean numbers on a chart, with days on one side and jellybeans on the other, it looks like a little mountain range, up and down depending on how many jellybeans you ate. That’s a time series graph, and it helps you see patterns or changes over time.

So next time you count something every day, you're making your own time series!