The 3003 time series of the M3-Competition are distributed as follows:

The data file contains the following information for each series:

• The first line which includes the following:
  • The ID number of the series (from N0001 to N3003)
  • The number of data points (observations) of each series (let us call this number n).
  • The number of required forecasts
    • 6 for yearly data
    • 8 for quarterly data
    • 18 for monthly data
    • 8 for "others"
  • The type of series (e.g., YEARLY/MICRO or MONTHLY/INDUSTRY).
  • The ID number of each type of series (e.g., there are 146 YEARLY/MICRO series so this ID number goes from 1 to 146, while there are 334 MONTHLY/INDUSTRY series making their ID go from 1 to 334).
• n observations of time series data (8 per line)
• The starting date of the data (Year and Period, if no information is available or the information is not relevant the value is 0.0).
• A short description (title) for the time series.