The newest release of daru brings alongwith it added support for time series data analysis, manipulation and visualization.

A time series is any data is indexed (or labelled) by time. This includes the stock market index, prices of crude oil or precious metals, or even geo-locations over a period of time.

The primary manner in which daru implements a time series is by indexing data objects (i.e Daru::Vector or Daru::DataFrame) on a new index called the DateTimeIndex. A DateTimeIndex consists of dates, which can queried individually or sliced.

Introduction

A very basic time series can be created with something like this:

require 'distribution'
require 'daru'

rng = Distribution::Normal.rng

index  = Daru::DateTimeIndex.date_range(:start => '2012-4-2', :periods => 1000, :freq => 'D')
vector = Daru::Vector.new(1000.times.map {rng.call}, index: index)

![/assets//images/daru_time_series/simple_vector.png][A Simple Vector indexed on DateTimeIndex]

In the above code, the DateTimeIndex.date_range function is creating a DateTimeIndex starting from a particular date and spanning for 1000 periods, with a frequency of 1 day between period. For a complete coverage of DateTimeIndex see this notebook. For an introduction to the date offsets used by daru see this blog post.

The index is passed into the Vector like a normal Daru::Index object.

Statistics functions and plotting for time series

Many functions are avaiable in daru for computing useful statistics and analysis. A brief of summary of statistics methods available on time series is as follows:

Method Name Description
rolling_mean Calculate Moving Average
rolling_median Calculate Moving Median
rolling_std Calculate Moving Standard Deviation
rolling_variance Calculate Moving Variance
rolling_max Calculate Moving Maximum value
rolling_min Calcuclate moving minimum value
rolling_count Calculate moving non-missing values
rolling_sum Calculate moving sum
ema Calculate exponential moving average
macd Moving Average Convergence-Divergence
acf Calculate Autocorrelation Co-efficients of the Series
acvf Provide the auto-covariance value

To demonstrate, the rolling mean of a Daru::Vector can be computed as follows:


require 'daru'
require 'distribution'

rng    = Distribution::Normal.rng
vector = Daru::Vector.new(
  1000.times.map { rng.call }, 
  index: Daru::DateTimeIndex.date_range(
    :start => '2012-4-2', :periods => 1000, :freq => 'D')
)
# Compute the cumulative sum
vector = vector.cumsum
rolling = vector.rolling_mean 60

rolling.tail

![/assets//images/daru_time_series/rolling_mean.png][Rolling Mean Tail]

This time series can be very easily plotted with its rolling mean by using the GnuplotRB gem:


require 'gnuplotrb'

GnuplotRB::Plot.new(
  [vector , with: 'lines', title: 'Vector'],
  [rolling, with: 'lines', title: 'Rolling Mean'])

![/assets//images/daru_time_series/cumsum_rolling_line_graph.png][Line Graph of Rolling mean and cumsum]

These methods are also available on DataFrame, which results in calling them on each of numeric vectors:


require 'daru'
require 'distribution'

rng    = Distribution::Normal.rng
index  = Daru::DateTimeIndex.date_range(:start => '2012-4-2', :periods => 1000, :freq => 'D')
df = Daru::DataFrame.new({
  a: 1000.times.map { rng.call },
  b: 1000.times.map { rng.call },
  c: 1000.times.map { rng.call }
}, index: index)

![/assets//images/daru_time_series/dataframe.png][DateTime indexed DataFrame]

In a manner similar to that done with Vectors above, we can easily plot each Vector of the DataFrame with GNU plot:


require 'gnuplotrb'

# Calculate cumulative sum of each Vector
df = df.cumsum

# Compute rolling sum of each Vector with a loopback length of 60.
r_sum = df.rolling_sum(60)

plots = []
r_sum.each_vector_with_index do |vec,n|
  plots << GnuplotRB::Plot.new([vec, with: 'lines', title: n])
end
GnuplotRB::Multiplot.new(*plots, layout: [3,1], title: 'Rolling sums')

![/assets//images/daru_time_series/dataframe_plot.png][Plotting the DataFrame]

Usage with statsample-timeseries

Daru now integrates with statsample-timeseries, a statsample extension that provides many useful statistical analysis tools commonly applied to time series.

Some examples with working examples of daru and statsample-timseries are coming soon. Stay tuned!