Seasonal Subseries Plot

Seasonal Subseries Plot

Seasonal subseries plots are a tool for detecting seasonality in a time series. This plot allows one to detect both between-group and within-group patterns. This plot is only useful if the period of the seasonality is already known. In many cases, this will in fact be known. For example, monthly data typically has a period of 12. If the period is not known, an autocorrelation plot or spectral plot can be used to determine it. If there is a large number of observations, then a box plot may be preferable.