Hi Mary Ann, I'm afraid I'm not really qualified to answer, though someone else on this list might be: I might suggest you ask on CrossValidated (stats.stackexchange.com) where a bunch of nice folks who know far more than me about these matters answer statistical questions. In particular, I know Prof Hyndman is seen there on occasion and he could certainly give you an answer.
Cheers, Michael On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Mary Ann Middleton <mab...@sfu.ca> wrote: > Hi Michael, > > > > Thank you so much for your email. That really helped, and with a frequency > of 24, I finally have some figures I can work with!! > > > > I have a follow up question. Do you have any resources you would recommend > that would explain the difference between stl() and decompose()? I have > been reading the help files, and googling, but I am not finding the right > resources. > > > > There are some notable difference between the "random" and the "remainder" > in each and I am unsure which is correct for my purposes. > > > > At this time, I can use the "random" calculation from decompose() to > generate an acf of the data after the seasonal patterns and trends are > stripped > > (acf(na.omit(x.ts.decomp$random)), > > which is ultimately what I need, however, that isn't solid justification for > choosing that calculation. > > > > Any pointers appreciated. > > > > Cheers, > > Mary Ann > > ________________________________ > > From: "R. Michael Weylandt" <michael.weyla...@gmail.com> > To: "Mary Ann Middleton" <mab...@sfu.ca> > Cc: r-help@r-project.org > Sent: Thursday, August 9, 2012 2:51:16 PM > Subject: Re: [R] POSIXct to ts > > On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Mary Ann Middleton <mab...@sfu.ca> wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> I have a dataframe (try.1) with date/time and temperature columns, and >> the date/time is in POSIXct fomat. Sample included below. >> >> I would like to to try decompose () or stl() to look at the trends and >> seasonality in my data, eventually so that I can look at autocorrelation. >> The series is 3 years of water temperature with clearly visible seasonal >> periods. >> >> Right now, if I try decompose, I get the following error, w hich I beleive >> is because I haven't correctly defined a time series. >> "Error in decompose(try.1) : time series has no or less than 2 periods" >> >> I am stuck trying to go from POSIXct to as.ts >> Any suggestions on how to tackle this would be greatly appreciated. >> >> Sincerely, >> Mary Ann >> >> A sample of the data looks like this: >> 'data.frame': 26925 obs. of 2 variables: >> $ date : POSIXct, format: "2008-07-11 21:00:00" "2008-07-11 >> 22:00:00" ... >> $ DL_1297699: num 15.3 15.1 14.9 14.6 14.1 ... date DL_1297699 1 >> 2008-07-11 21:00:00 15.318 >> 2 2008-07-11 22:00:00 15.127 >> 3 2008-07-11 23:00:00 14.888 >> 4 2008-07-12 00:00:00 14.553 >> 5 2008-07-12 01:00:00 14.146 >> 6 2008-07-12 02:00:00 13.738 >> 7 2008-07-12 03:00:00 13.401 >> 8 2008-07-12 04:00:00 13.088 >> 9 2008-07-12 05:00:00 12.823 >> 10 2008-07-12 06:00:00 12.630 and the dput(head(x,50) gives this >> output: structure(list(date = structure(c(1215810000, 1215813600, >> 1215817200, >> 1215820800, 1215824400, 1215828000, 1215831600, 1215835200, 1215838800, >> 1215842400, 1215846000, 1215849600, 1215853200, 1215856800, 1215860400, >> 1215864000, 1215867600, 1215871200, 1215874800, 1215878400, 1215882000, >> 1215885600, 1215889200, 1215892800, 1215896400, 1215900000, 1215903600, >> 1215907200, 1215910800, 1215914400, 1215918000, 1215921600, 1215925200, >> 1215928800, 1215932400, 1215936000, 1215939600, 1215943200, 1215946800, >> 1215950400, 1215954000, 1215957600, 1215961200, 1215964800, 1215968400, >> 1215972000, 1215975600, 1215979200, 1215982800, 1215986400), class = >> c("POSIXt", >> "POSIXct"), tzone = "UTC"), DL_1297699 = c(15.318, 15.127, 14.888, >> 14.553, 14.146, 13.738, 13.401, 13.088, 12.823, 12.63, 12.461, >> 12.413, 12.461, 12.703, 13.04, 13.497, 14.026, 14.553, 15.031, >> 15.366, 15.7, 15.819, 15.819, 15.7, 15.605, 15.461, 15.247, 14.984, >> 14.673, 14.337, 14.002, 13.666, 13.377, 13.137, 12.944, 12.823, >> 12.847, 13.016, 13.329, 13.762, 14.242, 14.697, 15.175, 15.581, >> 15.891, 16.034, 16.034, 15.939, 15.772, 15.581)), .Names = c("date", >> "DL_1297699"), row.names = c(NA, 50L), class = "data.frame") >> > > Thank you for the dput()-ed data! > > The "time series" object that stl() and decompose() expect doesn't > have time stamps -- rather it has a "start" and "end" marker as well > as a frequency. [For more details, see ?tsp] > > With your described data, I'd imagine you'd have start = 2008 and > frequency = 365*24 (if you have hourly data and an underlying yearly > periodicity) but to work with the data you gave, lets suppose 12 hours > is a cycle. Note you don't have to give end because that's figured out > automatically from frequency and start. > > x.ts <- ts(x[,2], start = 1, frequency = 12) > > then I can > > stl(x, "per") > decompose(x) > > as desired. > > Hope that helps, > Michael > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.