Autoregressive model

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In statistics, econometrics, and signal processing, an autoregressive (AR) model is a representation of a type of random process; as such, it can be used to describe certain time-varying processes in nature, economics, behavior, etc. The autoregressive model specifies that the output variable depends linearly on its own previous values and on a stochastic term (an imperfectly predictable term); thus the model is in the form of a stochastic difference equation (or recurrence relation) which should not be confused with a differential equation. Together with the moving-average (MA) model, it is a special case and key component of the more general autoregressive–moving-average (ARMA) and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models of time series, which have a more complicated stochastic structure; it is also a special case of the vector autoregressive model (VAR), which consists of a system of more than one interlocking stochastic difference equation in more than one evolving random variable.

Unlike the moving-average (MA) model, the autoregressive model is not always stationary, because it may contain a unit root.

Large language models are called autoregressive, but they are not a classical autoregressive model in this sense because they are not linear.