Skip to content

Plotting Time Series

2 messages · John Davis, Brian Ripley

#
I'm new to R and reading Modern Applied Statistics w/ S-Plus (read the
first two chapters and am skimming the chapter 13). I'm trying to take
data of the form:

Time Attribute Frequency
1       A       7
1       B       12
2       A       6
2       C       4
2       D       7
4       B       11
4       D       5
5       A       9
5       B       11
5       C       14
   [...]

and create a time series (Time ~ Frequency) for each attribute in the
same plot somewhat similar to Figure 13.1 on page 403 (which plot I
can reproduce following ch13.R).

There are a few ways I've thought to address this:

1. Rearrange the data into one file for each attribute

eg.

File_A
1 7
2 6
5 9

Then plot each in the same plot...

2. Read the data from one file, then use the factors to create vectors
   of different lengths holding the time and freq data.

3. Divine some magic about factors and do it all with some incredible
   one liner.

The last is where I'd like to get to, but I need a better mental model
of what is going on... Presently, I'm just "trying stuff". Anyway, any
clues would be appreciated, about the problem itself, or about the
"trying stuff" approach to R.

Regards, jd
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
#
On 24 May 2000, John Davis wrote:

            
BTW, Time ~ Frequency has a technical meaning in R, and you don't mean it
in that sense. It's in Chapter 6, one of the ones you skipped.
And most people would read that to mean Time as the response and Frequency
the time base, which I think is the reverse of what you mean.
Unfortunately, your example is not a time series in the sense used in R.
That must have a regularly-spaced time base.  You have what S-PLUS
calls an `irregular time series' (class its) and little support for.

You could plot the series by

plot(Time[Attribute==A], Frequency[Attribute==A])

for example.  Indexing is a very powerful tool in the S language.