The process of calculating or emphasizing differences between things, or in mathematics/statistics, subtracting consecutive values from a dataset.
From 'difference' as a verb plus '-ing' (present participle). In technical usage, it emerged in 20th-century mathematics and statistics as analysts needed precise language for data transformation techniques.
Data scientists use 'differencing' as a technique to make non-stationary time series stationary—basically, you subtract each value from the next to remove trends, making the data easier to analyze! It's a boring-sounding word for a mathematically powerful trick.
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