This is a univariate time series prediction problem. As the following code shows, I divide the initial data into a train dataset (trainX) and a test dataset(testX), then I create a LSTM network by keras. Next, I train the model by the train dataset. However, when I want to get the prediction, I need to know the test value, so my problem is: why do I have to predict since I have known the true value which is test dataset in this problem. What I want to get is the prediction value of future time? If I have some misunderstandings about LSTM network, please tell me.
Thank you!
# create and fit the LSTM network
model = Sequential()
model.add(LSTM(4, input_shape=(1, look_back)))
model.add(Dense(1))
model.compile(loss='mean_squared_error', optimizer='adam')
model.fit(trainX, trainY, epochs=100, batch_size=1, verbose=2)
# make predictions
trainPredict = model.predict(trainX)
testPredict = model.predict(testX)
why do I have to predict since I have known the true value which is test dataset in this problem. What I want to get is the prediction value of future time?
In ML, we give test data X and it returns us Y. In the case of time-series, it may mislead a beginner a bit as we use the X and output is apparently X as well: The difference here is that we are inputting old values of time-series as X and the output Y is value of same time-series but we are predicting in future (can be applied for present or even past as well) as you have identified it correctly.
(P.S: I would recommend you to begin with simple regression and then come to LSTMs etc. if all you want is to learn the Machine Learning.)