Certainty

Time merges may generate new data by extrapolation or interpolation. For each point, a record is kept of whether it existed before the time merge or whether it was generated, and, if generated, how far away it was from known data. This record is called certainty.

You can query certainty values with the $certainty transform or change them with $setcert. When you prepare data for model training with some tool sets, you can use the certainty values to pay more attention to points with higher certainty.

The distance from known data that, with the time merge, determined a certainty of zero is set with a parameter called maxCert, which is set in the time merge configuration as Zero certainty after.

Certainty values are generated by the $TimeMerge transform and do not use any other information about the variable. If you time merge the same variable twice, its certainties after the second time merge do not consider any poor certainties it may have had resulting from the first-time merge. If you will be making use of certainty information, avoid time merging the same variable more than once.