<p>I've gone through numerous books and articles and here are my findings. May be they will help others like me.<br />
Regarding theory - I found an article <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6613" rel="nofollow noreferrer">An Introductory Study on Time Series Modeling and Forecasting</a> very well written. That doesn't mean I understood all of its contents, but it's a really good overview of available time series models. <br />
If you're like me and like to see some actual code - there's <a href="https://www.quantstart.com/articles#time-series-analysis" rel="nofollow noreferrer">article series on QuantStart</a>. Examples are in R, but I guess many of them are portable to Python.
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I can highly recommend <a href="https://www.quantstart.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">QuantStart blog</a> by Michael Halls-Moore, I found articles easy to read and the author has done a great job trying not to overwhelm a reader with math. I also read Michael's <a href="https://www.quantstart.com/successful-algorithmic-trading-ebook" rel="nofollow noreferrer">first book</a> and it's a good one for a beginner in the space like me. <br />
Textbooks on the topic are extremely hard for me to read. I tried <a href="http://amzn.to/2n32JKn" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Time Series Analysis by Hamilton</a>, but haven't gotten far. <br />
Regarding outlier detection I mentioned - I've found <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3390458/simple-algorithm-for-online-outlier-detection-of-a-generic-time-series">this question on SO</a> and <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1142/simple-algorithm-for-online-outlier-detection-of-a-generic-time-series">its stats counterpart</a>. By the looks of it, it's not something you can study and implement in a couple of evenings, at least not for me.</p>
Down-to-earth introduction to time-series for a programmer
<p>I'm a programmer who is interested in processing and analyzing time-series data. I  know basic statistics and math, but I'm afraid that's all.<br />
Can you please recommend good books and/or articles that <strong>does not require Ph.D. to understand them</strong>? <br />
As for my concrete tasks - I want to be able to spot trends, eliminate outliers, be able to make predictions and calculate stats over a range of values. We have quite a bit of events coming off our systems. <br />
I started reading "Introduction to Time Series and Forecasting" by Brockwell and Davis - and I'm completely lost in math. <br />
<strong>update on outliers</strong> by outliers I mean data points that doesn't necessarily make sense. e.g. the exchange rate is 1.5$(+-10 cents) for a pound on average, but a guy around the corner offers 1.09$ and says he's completely legit. <br /></p>