Examples of time series

In general, our goal in presenting these examples is to emphasize plotting methods that are appropriate and useful for finding patterns that will lead to suitable models for our time series data. To see the exhibits of the examples,  you should run the related R codes. This can be done easily by copying and pasting the codes given right after the discussions of each example. It's a good practice to try to understand the codes in learning R also.

Annual Rainfall in Los Angeles

Exhibit 1.1 displays a time series plot of the annual rainfall amounts recorded in Los Angeles, California, over more than 100 years. The plot shows considerable variation in rainfall amount over the years — some years are low, some high, and many are in-between in value. The year 1883 was an exceptionally wet year for Los Angeles, while 1983 was quite dry. For analysis and modeling purposes we are interested in whether or not consecutive years are related in some way. If so, we might be able to use one year’s rainfall value to help forecast next year’s rainfall amount. One graphical way to investigate that question is to pair up consecutive rainfall values and plot the resulting scatterplot of pairs.
Exhibit 1.2 shows such a scatterplot for rainfall. For example, the point plotted near the lower right-hand corner shows that the year of extremely high rainfall, 40 inches in 1883, was followed by a middle of the road amount (about 12 inches) in 1884. The point  near the top of the display shows that the 40 inch year was preceded by a much more typical year of about 15 inches.

Exhibit 1.1 Time Series Plot of Los Angeles Annual Rainfall
> library(TSA)
> win.graph(width=4.875, height=2.5,pointsize=8)
> data(larain); plot(larain,ylab='Inches',xlab='Year',type='o')


Exhibit 1.2 Scatterplot of LA Rainfall versus Last Year’s LA Rainfall
> win.graph(width=3,height=3,pointsize=8)
> plot(y=larain,x=zlag(larain),ylab='Inches',
xlab='Previous Year Inches')


An Industrial Chemical Process

As a second example, we consider a time series from an industrial chemical process. The variable measured here is a color property from consecutive batches in the process. Exhibit 1.3 shows a time series plot of these color values. Here values that are neighbors
in time tend to be similar in size. It seems that neighbors are related to one another.

This can be seen better by constructing the scatterplot of neighboring pairs as we did with the first example.
Exhibit 1.4 displays the scatterplot of the neighboring pairs of color values. We see a slight upward trend in this plot—low values tend to be followed in the next batch by low values, middle-sized values tend to be followed by middle-sized values, and high values tend to be followed by high values. The trend is apparent but is not terribly strong. For example, the correlation in this scatterplot is about 0.6.


Exhibit 1.3 Time Series Plot of Color Property from a Chemical Process
> win.graph(width=4.875, height=2.5,pointsize=8)
> data(color)
> plot(color,ylab='Color Property',xlab='Batch',type='o')


Exhibit 1.4 Scatterplot of Color Value versus Previous Color Value
> win.graph(width=3,height=3,pointsize=8)
> plot(y=color,x=zlag(color),ylab='Color Property',
xlab='Previous Batch Color Property')


Annual Abundance of Canadian Hare

Our third example concerns the annual abundance of Canadian hare. Exhibit 1.5 gives the time series plot of this abundance over about 30 years. Neighboring values here are very closely related. Large changes in abundance do not occur from one year to the next.
This neighboring correlation is seen clearly in Exhibit 1.6 where we have plotted abundance versus the previous year’s abundance. As in the previous example, we see an upward trend in the plot—low values tend to be followed by low values in the next year, middle-sized values by middle-sized values, and high values by high values.

Exhibit 1.5 Abundance of Canadian Hare
> win.graph(width=4.875, height=2.5,pointsize=8)
> data(hare); plot(hare,ylab='Abundance',xlab='Year',type='o')

Exhibit 1.6 Hare Abundance versus Previous Year’s Hare Abundance
> win.graph(width=3, height=3,pointsize=8)
> plot(y=hare,x=zlag(hare),ylab='Abundance',
xlab='Previous Year Abundance')


Monthly Average Temperatures in Dubuque, Iowa

The average monthly temperatures (in degrees Fahrenheit) over a number of years recorded in Dubuque, Iowa, are shown in Exhibit 1.7.


This time series displays a very regular pattern called seasonality. Seasonality for monthly values occurs when observations twelve months apart are related in some manner or another. All Januarys and Februarys are quite cold but they are similar in value and different from the temperatures of the warmer months of June, July, and August, for example. There is still variation among the January values and variation among the June values. Models for such series must accommodate this variation while preserving the
similarities. Here the reason for the seasonality is well understood—the Northern Hemisphere’s changing inclination toward the sun.

Exhibit 1.7 Average Monthly Temperatures, Dubuque, Iowa
> win.graph(width=4.875, height=2.5,pointsize=8)
> data(tempdub); plot(tempdub,ylab='Temperature',type='o')

Monthly Oil Filter Sales

Our last example for this chapter concerns the monthly sales to dealers of a specialty oil filter for construction equipment  manufactured by John Deere. When these data were first presented to one of the authors, the manager said, “There is no reason to believe that these sales are seasonal.” Seasonality would be present if January values tended to be related to other January values, February values tended to be related to other February values, and so forth. The time series plot shown in Exhibit 1.8 is not designed to display seasonality especially well. Exhibit 1.9 gives the same plot but amended to use meaningful plotting symbols. In this plot, all January values are plotted with the character J, all Februarys with F, all Marches with M, and so forth.With these plotting symbols, it is much easier to see that sales for the winter months of January and February all tend to be high, while sales in September, October, November, and December are generally quite low. The seasonality in the data is much easier to see from this modified time series plot.

Exhibit 1.8 Monthly Oil Filter Sales
> data(oilfilters); plot(oilfilters,type='o',ylab='Sales')

Exhibit 1.9 Monthly Oil Filter Sales with Special Plotting Symbols
> plot(oilfilters,type='l',ylab='Sales')
> points(y=oilfilters,x=time(oilfilters),
pch=as.vector(season(oilfilters)))

__________

In reading the plot, you will still have to distinguish between Januarys, Junes, and Julys, between Marches and Mays, and Aprils and Augusts, but this is easily done by looking at neighboring plotting characters.
 

Son değiştirme: 15 February 2016, Monday, 15:56