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Time Series (Legacy)

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This is the legacy Time Series module. For new projects, we recommend using the new Time Series module, which uses modern tidyverts packages and provides better support for complex time series data.

Graphics for time series aimed at seasonal series.

Includes time series plots with smoothed trends, plots displaying seasonal decomposition, forecasting using Holt-Winters, and plots for comparing a set of series.

Caters for constant additive or multiplicative seasonal effects.

Specifying the Time Structure

Users can supply time information to iNZight in one of two ways: either by specifying an appropriately formatted variable, or by manually telling iNZight about the structure.

Supported Time Variables

iNZight's Time Series module can currently only read specially formatted variables to determine the time structure of a data set, and supports observations made over periods of a year (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly observations), daily observations made over weeks, and hourly data made over days.

The following table shows the formula for these time variables (code letters in parentheses are optional):

PeriodFrequencyCodeExamplesNotes
YearlyAnnual{Y}yyyy1990, Y1990
Quarterly{Y}yyyyQqq1990Q01, Y1992Q01qq can be 01-04
Monthly{Y}yyyyMmm1990M01, Y1990M01mm can be 01-12
Weekly (7-days/week)*{Y}yyyyWww1990W01, Y1990W02ww can be 01-52
Daily{Y}yyyyDddd1990D01, 1990D127, Y1990D001ddd can be 001-366
WeeklyDailyWwwDddW01D01, W125D07dd can be 01-07
DailyHourlyDddHhhD01H01, D184H23hh can be 01-24

* If your data has a period of 5 days per week, you'll need to specify the time manually (see below).

Manual Time Specification

If your data doesn't fit one of the above structures, or you don't want to manually create the variable, you can easily specify the structure of your time series data by choosing Provide Time Information.

  • Use the table above to determine what the period and frequency of your data should be, then choose the appropriate options from the drop-downs.
  • You can specify your own ("custom") frequency if it is not one of the common ones listed above; for example, if you have daily data over a period of work weeks (Monday–Friday), set the frequency to 5.

Additional Resources

CensusAtSchool NZ has some resources related to time series.