I still don't get it...
I believe the white noise {a_t} are unobservable (this term is used in all of my textbooks) because the true value of the parameters, phi's and theta's, are unknown. We can never calculate the exact value of {a_t}. We can only calculate the (observable) residuals "a_t hat", but based on the above definition of residual, to calculate a_t hat, we need to know the values of the (unobservable) white noise terms
a[sub:1pifj3j2]t-1[/sub:1pifj3j2], a[sub:1pifj3j2]t-2[/sub:1pifj3j2], ..., a[sub:1pifj3j2]t-q[/sub:1pifj3j2] which seem to be going in circles because they are defining the residuals in terms of the white noises? What sense does it make?
So how can we actually compute the values of "residuals" of ARMA model?
Thanks!