[R] block statistics with POSIX classes

[Gabor Grothendieck]

I am not sure that I understand what you are looking
for since you did not provide any sample data with
corresponding output to clarify your question.

Here is another guess.

If y is just a numeric vector with monthly data 
and dp is a POSIXlt vector of the same length then:

   aggregate(list(y=y), list(dp$year), mean)$y

will perform aggregation, as will

  aggregate(ts(y, start=c(d$year[1],d$mon[1]+1), freq = 12), nfreq=1, mean)

which converts y to ts and then performs the aggregation.  The first
one will work even if y is irregular while the second one assumes that
y must be monthly.  The second one returns a ts object.

By the way, I had a look at gev's source and it seems that despite the
documentation it does not use POSIXct anywhere internally.  If the
block is "year" or other character value then it simply assumes that
whatever datetime class is used has an as.POSIXlt method.  If your dates
were POSIXct rather than POSIXlt then it would be important to ensure
that whatever timezone is assumed (which I did not check) in the conversion 
is the one you are using.  You could use character dates or Date class to 
avoid this problem.  Since you appear to be using POSIXlt datetimes from
the beginning I think you should be ok.


Kahra Hannu <kahra <at> mpsgr.it> writes:

: 
: Thank you Petr and Gabor for the answers.
: 
: They did not, however, solve my original problem. When I have a monthly time 
series y with a POSIX date
: variable dp, the most obvious way to compute e.g. the annual means is to use 
aggregate(y, 1, mean) that
: works with time series. However, I got stuck with the idea of using the 'by' 
argument as by = dp$year. But in
: that case y has to be a data.frame. The easiest way must be the best way.
: 
: Regards,
: Hannu 
: 
: -----Original Message-----
: From: r-help-bounces <at> stat.math.ethz.ch
: [mailto:r-help-bounces <at> stat.math.ethz.ch]On Behalf Of Gabor Grothendieck
: Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:56 PM
: To: r-help <at> stat.math.ethz.ch
: Subject: Re: [R] block statistics with POSIX classes
: 
: 
: Kahra Hannu <kahra <at> mpsgr.it> writes:
: 
: : 
: : I have a monthly price index series x, the related return series y = diff
(log
: (x)) and a POSIXlt date-time
: : variable dp. I would like to apply annual blocks to compute for example 
: annual block maxima and mean of y.
: : 
: : When studying the POSIX classes, in the first stage of the learning curve, 
I 
: computed the maximum drawdown
: : of x:
: : > mdd <- maxdrawdown(x)
: : > max.dd <- mdd$maxdrawdown
: : > from <- as.character(dp[mdd$from]) 
: : > to <- as.character(dp[mdd$to])                       
: : > from; to
: : [1] "2000-08-31"
: : [1] "2003-03-31"
: : that gives me the POSIX dates of the start and end of the period and 
: suggests that I have done something correctly.
: : 
: : Two questions:
: : (1) how to implement annual blocks and compute e.g. annual max, min and 
mean 
: of y (each year's max, min, mean)?
: : (2) how to apply POSIX variables with the 'block' argument in gev in the 
: evir package?
: : 
: : The S+FinMetrics function aggregateSeries does the job in that module; but 
I 
: do not know, how handle it in R.
: : My guess is that (1) is done by using the function aggregate, but how to 
: define the 'by' argument with POSIX variables?
: 
: 1. To create a ts monthly time series you specify the first month
: and a frequency of 12 like this.  
: 
: z.m <- ts(rep(1:6,4), start = c(2000,1), freq = 12)
: z.m
: 
: # Annual aggregate is done using aggregate.ts with nfreq = 1
: z.y <- aggregate(z.m, nfreq = 1, max)
: z.y
: 
: # To create a POSIXct series of times using seq
: # (This will use GMT.  Use tz="" arg to ISOdate if you want current tz.)
: z.y.times <- seq(ISOdate(2000,1,1), length = length(z.y), by = "year")
: z.y.times
: 
: 2. Have not used evir but looking at ?gev it seems you can
: use block = 12 if you have monthly data and want the blocks to be 
: successive 12 month periods or you can add a POSIXct times attribute to 
: your data as below (also see comment re tz above) and then use 
: block = "year" in your gev call.
: 
: attr(z.m, "times") <- seq(ISOdate(2000,1,1), length=length(z.m), by="month")
: str(z.m)  # display z.m along with attribute info
: 
: ______________________________________________
: R-help <at> stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
: https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
: PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
: 
: ______________________________________________
: R-help <at> stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
: https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
: PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
: 
: