AI engineering glossary · Time series recsys
What is seasonal differencing?
Seasonal differencing: Subtracting the value from one full season earlier, y_t - y_(t-m) with m as the period, to remove a repeating seasonal pattern. For monthly data with yearly seasonality, m = 12.
Seasonal differencing: an example
March 2026 sales minus March 2025 sales for each year in a monthly series.
Related terms
More Time series recsys terms
- Seasonal naive forecast
- Seasonality
- Sequential recommendation
- Serendipity
- Session-based recommendation
- Stationarity
- STL decomposition
- Strict stationarity
Where you learn it
Seasonal differencing is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.