In one embodiment, a method includes identifying a plurality of period combinations for a metric of interest. Each period combination comprises one or more time periods and each of the one or more time periods comprises one or more segments. The method further includes, for each period combination of the plurality of period combinations and each historical value of a plurality of historical values of the metric of interest, incrementally inserting the historical value into corresponding segments of the one or more time periods. Moreover, the method includes ranking the plurality of period combinations based on comparisons of the plurality of historical values to sets of corresponding predicted values. The method also includes selecting a highest-ranked period combination as best characterizing the metric of interest.