title: What kind of Machine Learning Problem it is if we have to Predict customer next spend category in python?
body: <p>I have a data set of shape -> <code>(6210782, 5)</code>. </p>
  
  <p>This has <code>200,000 unique customers</code> and their transactions at different different outlets.  Time Series is little over an year. </p>
  
  <pre><code>df.head()
  
  customer_id TransactionDate TransationTime  Amount  OutletCategory
  514         22-04-2015      19:42:18        9445    M16
  514         23-04-2015      16:29:28        2000    M23
  514         02-05-2015      15:17:55        1398    M16
  514         27-06-2015      13:51:29        1995    M7
  514         07-08-2015      17:31:30        2000    M23
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>What Kind of Machine Learning Problem it is and what should be the approach and algorithm used in solving following tasks:</strong></p>
  
  <p>1) <code>predict customers Next Transaction category</code>? 
  (I am thinking of this as multinomial classification)</p>
  
  <p>2) <code>predict customers Next Transaction category in next 6 hrs</code>?</p>
  
  <p>3) <code>predict customers Next Transaction Amount</code>?
  (Is this an LSTM task)</p>
  
  <p>4) <code>predict customers Next Transaction Amount in next 6 hrs</code>?</p>
  
  <p>As we have 200,000 unique customers how should I prepare the data if I have to predict the next transaction amount ? Should I pivot the customers to columns???</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>Data/ Time Series Exploration that may help visualize the data:</strong></p>
  
  <p><strong>Below is the Transactions Amount wrt to categories over the time series chart:</strong></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/duoaA.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/duoaA.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p><code>For below charts:</code> I have created a small data set of "Datetime" as index and "Amount" column to understand the transnational behavior wrt to time.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Amount Spend to Transaction Dates chart:</strong></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/MACtA.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/MACtA.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p><strong>Amount Spend to Weekly TransactionDates chart:</strong></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/33IAK.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/33IAK.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p><strong>Mean of Amount spend in a day(hourly)</strong>
  <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QFu4D.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QFu4D.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>Expectations:</strong>
  I am new to Data Science and Python so just looking for right steps to proceed with the task (will manage the code myself)</p>