For what its worth, I am having the same issue. Specifically, I am using R 2.8.1 on Windows XP, applying auto.arima to the data from the http://www.neural-forecasting-competition.com/datasets.htm NN5 forecasting competition , series NN-101 through NN-111. The relevant code is
library(RODBC) channel <- odbcConnectExcel("NN5_FINAL_DATASET_WITH_TEST_DATA.xls") alldata <- sqlFetch(channel, "NN5 COMPLETE Data") odbcClose(channel) series <- alldata[17:751,102:112] actualWithdrawls <- alldata[752:807,102:112] fit <- auto.arima(series[,i], stationary=FALSE, ic="aic", max.p=12, max.q=3, stepwise=TRUE) tmp = predict(fit, n.ahead=56) forecast = tmp$pred As habby reported, every time the optimal model found includes drift, the call to predict results in Error in predict.Arima(fit, n.ahead = 56) : 'xreg' and 'newxreg' have different numbers of columns I have found other threads on this same issue with no responses. I am a fairly new R user, so maybe there is something basic I am doing incorrectly... I found some interesting, seemingly relevant discussion http://www.stat.pitt.edu/stoffer/tsa2/Rissues.htm here but have yet to digest it all. My basic problem is how to set up auto.arima to be as automated as possible. I had written a for loop to crunch through all of the series in from the NN5 competition and experiment with different auto.arima settings and compare out of sample forecast accuracy. But, having run into this issue, its unclear what the cause is and if/how it can be avoided. Thanks for any ideas. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/forecasting-issue-tp21585746p22775817.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.