pandas 0.10.1 documentation

Computational tools

Statistical functions

Percent Change

Both Series and DataFrame has a method pct_change to compute the percent change over a given number of periods (using fill_method to fill NA/null values).

In [209]: ser = Series(randn(8))

In [210]: ser.pct_change()
Out[210]: 
0         NaN
1   -1.602976
2    4.334938
3   -0.247456
4   -2.067345
5   -1.142903
6   -1.688214
7   -9.759729
In [211]: df = DataFrame(randn(10, 4))

In [212]: df.pct_change(periods=3)
Out[212]: 
          0         1         2         3
0       NaN       NaN       NaN       NaN
1       NaN       NaN       NaN       NaN
2       NaN       NaN       NaN       NaN
3 -0.218320 -1.054001  1.987147 -0.510183
4 -0.439121 -1.816454  0.649715 -4.822809
5 -0.127833 -3.042065 -5.866604 -1.776977
6 -2.596833 -1.959538 -2.111697 -3.798900
7 -0.117826 -2.169058  0.036094 -0.067696
8  2.492606 -1.357320 -1.205802 -1.558697
9 -1.012977  2.324558 -1.003744 -0.371806

Covariance

The Series object has a method cov to compute covariance between series (excluding NA/null values).

In [213]: s1 = Series(randn(1000))

In [214]: s2 = Series(randn(1000))

In [215]: s1.cov(s2)
Out[215]: 0.00068010881743109906

Analogously, DataFrame has a method cov to compute pairwise covariances among the series in the DataFrame, also excluding NA/null values.

In [216]: frame = DataFrame(randn(1000, 5), columns=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])

In [217]: frame.cov()
Out[217]: 
          a         b         c         d         e
a  1.000882 -0.003177 -0.002698 -0.006889  0.031912
b -0.003177  1.024721  0.000191  0.009212  0.000857
c -0.002698  0.000191  0.950735 -0.031743 -0.005087
d -0.006889  0.009212 -0.031743  1.002983 -0.047952
e  0.031912  0.000857 -0.005087 -0.047952  1.042487

DataFrame.cov also supports an optional min_periods keyword that specifies the required minimum number of observations for each column pair in order to have a valid result.

In [218]: frame = DataFrame(randn(20, 3), columns=['a', 'b', 'c'])

In [219]: frame.ix[:5, 'a'] = np.nan

In [220]: frame.ix[5:10, 'b'] = np.nan

In [221]: frame.cov()
Out[221]: 
          a         b         c
a  1.210090 -0.430629  0.018002
b -0.430629  1.240960  0.347188
c  0.018002  0.347188  1.301149

In [222]: frame.cov(min_periods=12)
Out[222]: 
          a         b         c
a  1.210090       NaN  0.018002
b       NaN  1.240960  0.347188
c  0.018002  0.347188  1.301149

Correlation

Several methods for computing correlations are provided. Several kinds of correlation methods are provided:

Method name Description
pearson (default) Standard correlation coefficient
kendall Kendall Tau correlation coefficient
spearman Spearman rank correlation coefficient

All of these are currently computed using pairwise complete observations.

In [223]: frame = DataFrame(randn(1000, 5), columns=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])

In [224]: frame.ix[::2] = np.nan

# Series with Series
In [225]: frame['a'].corr(frame['b'])
Out[225]: 0.013479040400098797

In [226]: frame['a'].corr(frame['b'], method='spearman')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-226-df8b57b5076a> in <module>()
----> 1 frame['a'].corr(frame['b'], method='spearman')
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/core/series.pyc in corr(self, other, method, min_periods)
   1699             return np.nan
   1700         return nanops.nancorr(this.values, other.values, method=method,
-> 1701                               min_periods=min_periods)
   1702 
   1703     def cov(self, other, min_periods=None):
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/core/nanops.pyc in nancorr(a, b, method, min_periods)
    408         return np.nan
    409 
--> 410     f = get_corr_func(method)
    411     return f(a, b)
    412 
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/core/nanops.pyc in get_corr_func(method)
    414 def get_corr_func(method):
    415     if method in ['kendall', 'spearman']:
--> 416         from scipy.stats import kendalltau, spearmanr
    417 
    418     def _pearson(a, b):
ImportError: No module named scipy.stats

# Pairwise correlation of DataFrame columns
In [227]: frame.corr()
Out[227]: 
          a         b         c         d         e
a  1.000000  0.013479 -0.049269 -0.042239 -0.028525
b  0.013479  1.000000 -0.020433 -0.011139  0.005654
c -0.049269 -0.020433  1.000000  0.018587 -0.054269
d -0.042239 -0.011139  0.018587  1.000000 -0.017060
e -0.028525  0.005654 -0.054269 -0.017060  1.000000

Note that non-numeric columns will be automatically excluded from the correlation calculation.

Like cov, corr also supports the optional min_periods keyword:

In [228]: frame = DataFrame(randn(20, 3), columns=['a', 'b', 'c'])

In [229]: frame.ix[:5, 'a'] = np.nan

In [230]: frame.ix[5:10, 'b'] = np.nan

In [231]: frame.corr()
Out[231]: 
          a         b         c
a  1.000000 -0.076520  0.160092
b -0.076520  1.000000  0.135967
c  0.160092  0.135967  1.000000

In [232]: frame.corr(min_periods=12)
Out[232]: 
          a         b         c
a  1.000000       NaN  0.160092
b       NaN  1.000000  0.135967
c  0.160092  0.135967  1.000000

A related method corrwith is implemented on DataFrame to compute the correlation between like-labeled Series contained in different DataFrame objects.

In [233]: index = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

In [234]: columns = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']

In [235]: df1 = DataFrame(randn(5, 4), index=index, columns=columns)

In [236]: df2 = DataFrame(randn(4, 4), index=index[:4], columns=columns)

In [237]: df1.corrwith(df2)
Out[237]: 
one     -0.125501
two     -0.493244
three    0.344056
four     0.004183

In [238]: df2.corrwith(df1, axis=1)
Out[238]: 
a   -0.675817
b    0.458296
c    0.190809
d   -0.186275
e         NaN

Data ranking

The rank method produces a data ranking with ties being assigned the mean of the ranks (by default) for the group:

In [239]: s = Series(np.random.randn(5), index=list('abcde'))

In [240]: s['d'] = s['b'] # so there's a tie

In [241]: s.rank()
Out[241]: 
a    5.0
b    2.5
c    1.0
d    2.5
e    4.0

rank is also a DataFrame method and can rank either the rows (axis=0) or the columns (axis=1). NaN values are excluded from the ranking.

In [242]: df = DataFrame(np.random.randn(10, 6))

In [243]: df[4] = df[2][:5] # some ties

In [244]: df
Out[244]: 
          0         1         2         3         4         5
0 -0.904948 -1.163537 -1.457187  0.135463 -1.457187  0.294650
1 -0.976288 -0.244652 -0.748406 -0.999601 -0.748406 -0.800809
2  0.401965  1.460840  1.256057  1.308127  1.256057  0.876004
3  0.205954  0.369552 -0.669304  0.038378 -0.669304  1.140296
4 -0.477586 -0.730705 -1.129149 -0.601463 -1.129149 -0.211196
5 -1.092970 -0.689246  0.908114  0.204848       NaN  0.463347
6  0.376892  0.959292  0.095572 -0.593740       NaN -0.069180
7 -1.002601  1.957794 -0.120708  0.094214       NaN -1.467422
8 -0.547231  0.664402 -0.519424 -0.073254       NaN -1.263544
9 -0.250277 -0.237428 -1.056443  0.419477       NaN  1.375064

In [245]: df.rank(1)
Out[245]: 
   0  1    2  3    4  5
0  4  3  1.5  5  1.5  6
1  2  6  4.5  1  4.5  3
2  1  6  3.5  5  3.5  2
3  4  5  1.5  3  1.5  6
4  5  3  1.5  4  1.5  6
5  1  2  5.0  3  NaN  4
6  4  5  3.0  1  NaN  2
7  2  5  3.0  4  NaN  1
8  2  5  3.0  4  NaN  1
9  2  3  1.0  4  NaN  5

rank optionally takes a parameter ascending which by default is true; when false, data is reverse-ranked, with larger values assigned a smaller rank.

rank supports different tie-breaking methods, specified with the method parameter:

  • average : average rank of tied group
  • min : lowest rank in the group
  • max : highest rank in the group
  • first : ranks assigned in the order they appear in the array

Note

These methods are significantly faster (around 10-20x) than scipy.stats.rankdata.

Moving (rolling) statistics / moments

For working with time series data, a number of functions are provided for computing common moving or rolling statistics. Among these are count, sum, mean, median, correlation, variance, covariance, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. All of these methods are in the pandas namespace, but otherwise they can be found in pandas.stats.moments.

Function Description
rolling_count Number of non-null observations
rolling_sum Sum of values
rolling_mean Mean of values
rolling_median Arithmetic median of values
rolling_min Minimum
rolling_max Maximum
rolling_std Unbiased standard deviation
rolling_var Unbiased variance
rolling_skew Unbiased skewness (3rd moment)
rolling_kurt Unbiased kurtosis (4th moment)
rolling_quantile Sample quantile (value at %)
rolling_apply Generic apply
rolling_cov Unbiased covariance (binary)
rolling_corr Correlation (binary)
rolling_corr_pairwise Pairwise correlation of DataFrame columns
rolling_window Moving window function

Generally these methods all have the same interface. The binary operators (e.g. rolling_corr) take two Series or DataFrames. Otherwise, they all accept the following arguments:

  • window: size of moving window
  • min_periods: threshold of non-null data points to require (otherwise result is NA)
  • freq: optionally specify a frequency string or DateOffset to pre-conform the data to. Note that prior to pandas v0.8.0, a keyword argument time_rule was used instead of freq that referred to the legacy time rule constants

These functions can be applied to ndarrays or Series objects:

In [246]: ts = Series(randn(1000), index=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=1000))

In [247]: ts = ts.cumsum()

In [248]: ts.plot(style='k--')
Out[248]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa2a2eec>

In [249]: rolling_mean(ts, 60).plot(style='k')
Out[249]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa2a2eec>
_images/rolling_mean_ex.png

They can also be applied to DataFrame objects. This is really just syntactic sugar for applying the moving window operator to all of the DataFrame’s columns:

In [250]: df = DataFrame(randn(1000, 4), index=ts.index,
   .....:                columns=['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'])
   .....:

In [251]: df = df.cumsum()

In [252]: rolling_sum(df, 60).plot(subplots=True)
Out[252]: 
array([<matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot object at 0xa35974c>,
       <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot object at 0xa3d432c>,
       <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot object at 0xa43e50c>,
       <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot object at 0xa44ba4c>], dtype=object)
_images/rolling_mean_frame.png

The rolling_apply function takes an extra func argument and performs generic rolling computations. The func argument should be a single function that produces a single value from an ndarray input. Suppose we wanted to compute the mean absolute deviation on a rolling basis:

In [253]: mad = lambda x: np.fabs(x - x.mean()).mean()

In [254]: rolling_apply(ts, 60, mad).plot(style='k')
Out[254]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa44ba4c>
_images/rolling_apply_ex.png

The rolling_window function performs a generic rolling window computation on the input data. The weights used in the window are specified by the win_type keyword. The list of recognized types are:

  • boxcar
  • triang
  • blackman
  • hamming
  • bartlett
  • parzen
  • bohman
  • blackmanharris
  • nuttall
  • barthann
  • kaiser (needs beta)
  • gaussian (needs std)
  • general_gaussian (needs power, width)
  • slepian (needs width).
In [255]: ser = Series(randn(10), index=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=10))

In [256]: rolling_window(ser, 5, 'triang')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-256-3b88bf115a6d> in <module>()
----> 1 rolling_window(ser, 5, 'triang')
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/stats/moments.pyc in rolling_window(arg, window, win_type, min_periods, freq, center, mean, time_rule, axis, **kwargs)
    640             import scipy.signal as sig
    641         except ImportError:
--> 642             raise ImportError('Please install scipy to generate window weight')
    643         win_type = _validate_win_type(win_type, kwargs)  # may pop from kwargs
    644         window = sig.get_window(win_type, window).astype(float)
ImportError: Please install scipy to generate window weight

Note that the boxcar window is equivalent to rolling_mean:

In [257]: rolling_window(ser, 5, 'boxcar')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-257-7c146141600d> in <module>()
----> 1 rolling_window(ser, 5, 'boxcar')
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/stats/moments.pyc in rolling_window(arg, window, win_type, min_periods, freq, center, mean, time_rule, axis, **kwargs)
    640             import scipy.signal as sig
    641         except ImportError:
--> 642             raise ImportError('Please install scipy to generate window weight')
    643         win_type = _validate_win_type(win_type, kwargs)  # may pop from kwargs
    644         window = sig.get_window(win_type, window).astype(float)
ImportError: Please install scipy to generate window weight

In [258]: rolling_mean(ser, 5)
Out[258]: 
2000-01-01         NaN
2000-01-02         NaN
2000-01-03         NaN
2000-01-04         NaN
2000-01-05   -0.841164
2000-01-06   -0.779948
2000-01-07   -0.565487
2000-01-08   -0.502815
2000-01-09   -0.553755
2000-01-10   -0.472211
Freq: D

For some windowing functions, additional parameters must be specified:

In [259]: rolling_window(ser, 5, 'gaussian', std=0.1)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-259-4ff400ba8b13> in <module>()
----> 1 rolling_window(ser, 5, 'gaussian', std=0.1)
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/stats/moments.pyc in rolling_window(arg, window, win_type, min_periods, freq, center, mean, time_rule, axis, **kwargs)
    640             import scipy.signal as sig
    641         except ImportError:
--> 642             raise ImportError('Please install scipy to generate window weight')
    643         win_type = _validate_win_type(win_type, kwargs)  # may pop from kwargs
    644         window = sig.get_window(win_type, window).astype(float)
ImportError: Please install scipy to generate window weight

By default the labels are set to the right edge of the window, but a center keyword is available so the labels can be set at the center. This keyword is available in other rolling functions as well.

In [260]: rolling_window(ser, 5, 'boxcar')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-260-7c146141600d> in <module>()
----> 1 rolling_window(ser, 5, 'boxcar')
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/stats/moments.pyc in rolling_window(arg, window, win_type, min_periods, freq, center, mean, time_rule, axis, **kwargs)
    640             import scipy.signal as sig
    641         except ImportError:
--> 642             raise ImportError('Please install scipy to generate window weight')
    643         win_type = _validate_win_type(win_type, kwargs)  # may pop from kwargs
    644         window = sig.get_window(win_type, window).astype(float)
ImportError: Please install scipy to generate window weight

In [261]: rolling_window(ser, 5, 'boxcar', center=True)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-261-15b3ccc56252> in <module>()
----> 1 rolling_window(ser, 5, 'boxcar', center=True)
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/stats/moments.pyc in rolling_window(arg, window, win_type, min_periods, freq, center, mean, time_rule, axis, **kwargs)
    640             import scipy.signal as sig
    641         except ImportError:
--> 642             raise ImportError('Please install scipy to generate window weight')
    643         win_type = _validate_win_type(win_type, kwargs)  # may pop from kwargs
    644         window = sig.get_window(win_type, window).astype(float)
ImportError: Please install scipy to generate window weight

In [262]: rolling_mean(ser, 5, center=True)
Out[262]: 
2000-01-01         NaN
2000-01-02         NaN
2000-01-03   -0.841164
2000-01-04   -0.779948
2000-01-05   -0.565487
2000-01-06   -0.502815
2000-01-07   -0.553755
2000-01-08   -0.472211
2000-01-09         NaN
2000-01-10         NaN
Freq: D

Binary rolling moments

rolling_cov and rolling_corr can compute moving window statistics about two Series or any combination of DataFrame/Series or DataFrame/DataFrame. Here is the behavior in each case:

  • two Series: compute the statistic for the pairing
  • DataFrame/Series: compute the statistics for each column of the DataFrame with the passed Series, thus returning a DataFrame
  • DataFrame/DataFrame: compute statistic for matching column names, returning a DataFrame

For example:

In [263]: df2 = df[:20]

In [264]: rolling_corr(df2, df2['B'], window=5)
Out[264]: 
                   A   B         C         D
2000-01-01       NaN NaN       NaN       NaN
2000-01-02       NaN NaN       NaN       NaN
2000-01-03       NaN NaN       NaN       NaN
2000-01-04       NaN NaN       NaN       NaN
2000-01-05 -0.262853   1  0.334449  0.193380
2000-01-06 -0.083745   1 -0.521587 -0.556126
2000-01-07 -0.292940   1 -0.658532 -0.458128
2000-01-08  0.840416   1  0.796505 -0.498672
2000-01-09 -0.135275   1  0.753895 -0.634445
2000-01-10 -0.346229   1 -0.682232 -0.645681
2000-01-11 -0.365524   1 -0.775831 -0.561991
2000-01-12 -0.204761   1 -0.855874 -0.382232
2000-01-13  0.575218   1 -0.747531  0.167892
2000-01-14  0.519499   1 -0.687277  0.192822
2000-01-15  0.048982   1  0.167669 -0.061463
2000-01-16  0.217190   1  0.167564 -0.326034
2000-01-17  0.641180   1 -0.164780 -0.111487
2000-01-18  0.130422   1  0.322833  0.632383
2000-01-19  0.317278   1  0.384528  0.813656
2000-01-20  0.293598   1  0.159538  0.742381

Computing rolling pairwise correlations

In financial data analysis and other fields it’s common to compute correlation matrices for a collection of time series. More difficult is to compute a moving-window correlation matrix. This can be done using the rolling_corr_pairwise function, which yields a Panel whose items are the dates in question:

In [265]: correls = rolling_corr_pairwise(df, 50)

In [266]: correls[df.index[-50]]
Out[266]: 
          A         B         C         D
A  1.000000  0.604221  0.767429 -0.776170
B  0.604221  1.000000  0.461484 -0.381148
C  0.767429  0.461484  1.000000 -0.748863
D -0.776170 -0.381148 -0.748863  1.000000

You can efficiently retrieve the time series of correlations between two columns using ix indexing:

In [267]: correls.ix[:, 'A', 'C'].plot()
Out[267]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa1231ac>
_images/rolling_corr_pairwise_ex.png

Expanding window moment functions

A common alternative to rolling statistics is to use an expanding window, which yields the value of the statistic with all the data available up to that point in time. As these calculations are a special case of rolling statistics, they are implemented in pandas such that the following two calls are equivalent:

In [268]: rolling_mean(df, window=len(df), min_periods=1)[:5]
Out[268]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-01 -1.388345  3.317290  0.344542 -0.036968
2000-01-02 -1.123132  3.622300  1.675867  0.595300
2000-01-03 -0.628502  3.626503  2.455240  1.060158
2000-01-04 -0.768740  3.888917  2.451354  1.281874
2000-01-05 -0.824034  4.108035  2.556112  1.140723

In [269]: expanding_mean(df)[:5]
Out[269]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-01 -1.388345  3.317290  0.344542 -0.036968
2000-01-02 -1.123132  3.622300  1.675867  0.595300
2000-01-03 -0.628502  3.626503  2.455240  1.060158
2000-01-04 -0.768740  3.888917  2.451354  1.281874
2000-01-05 -0.824034  4.108035  2.556112  1.140723

Like the rolling_ functions, the following methods are included in the pandas namespace or can be located in pandas.stats.moments.

Function Description
expanding_count Number of non-null observations
expanding_sum Sum of values
expanding_mean Mean of values
expanding_median Arithmetic median of values
expanding_min Minimum
expanding_max Maximum
expanding_std Unbiased standard deviation
expanding_var Unbiased variance
expanding_skew Unbiased skewness (3rd moment)
expanding_kurt Unbiased kurtosis (4th moment)
expanding_quantile Sample quantile (value at %)
expanding_apply Generic apply
expanding_cov Unbiased covariance (binary)
expanding_corr Correlation (binary)
expanding_corr_pairwise Pairwise correlation of DataFrame columns

Aside from not having a window parameter, these functions have the same interfaces as their rolling_ counterpart. Like above, the parameters they all accept are:

  • min_periods: threshold of non-null data points to require. Defaults to minimum needed to compute statistic. No NaNs will be output once min_periods non-null data points have been seen.
  • freq: optionally specify a frequency string or DateOffset to pre-conform the data to. Note that prior to pandas v0.8.0, a keyword argument time_rule was used instead of freq that referred to the legacy time rule constants

Note

The output of the rolling_ and expanding_ functions do not return a NaN if there are at least min_periods non-null values in the current window. This differs from cumsum, cumprod, cummax, and cummin, which return NaN in the output wherever a NaN is encountered in the input.

An expanding window statistic will be more stable (and less responsive) than its rolling window counterpart as the increasing window size decreases the relative impact of an individual data point. As an example, here is the expanding_mean output for the previous time series dataset:

In [270]: ts.plot(style='k--')
Out[270]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa127d8c>

In [271]: expanding_mean(ts).plot(style='k')
Out[271]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa127d8c>
_images/expanding_mean_frame.png

Exponentially weighted moment functions

A related set of functions are exponentially weighted versions of many of the above statistics. A number of EW (exponentially weighted) functions are provided using the blending method. For example, where y_t is the result and x_t the input, we compute an exponentially weighted moving average as

y_t = \alpha y_{t-1} + (1 - \alpha) x_t

One must have 0 < \alpha \leq 1, but rather than pass \alpha directly, it’s easier to think about either the span or center of mass (com) of an EW moment:

\alpha = \begin{cases} \frac{2}{s + 1}, s = \text{span}\\ \frac{1}{c + 1}, c = \text{center of mass} \end{cases}

You can pass one or the other to these functions but not both. Span corresponds to what is commonly called a “20-day EW moving average” for example. Center of mass has a more physical interpretation. For example, span = 20 corresponds to com = 9.5. Here is the list of functions available:

Function Description
ewma EW moving average
ewmvar EW moving variance
ewmstd EW moving standard deviation
ewmcorr EW moving correlation
ewmcov EW moving covariance

Here are an example for a univariate time series:

In [272]: plt.close('all')

In [273]: ts.plot(style='k--')
Out[273]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa4b760c>

In [274]: ewma(ts, span=20).plot(style='k')
Out[274]: <matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot at 0xa4b760c>
_images/ewma_ex.png

Note

The EW functions perform a standard adjustment to the initial observations whereby if there are fewer observations than called for in the span, those observations are reweighted accordingly.

Linear and panel regression

Note

We plan to move this functionality to statsmodels for the next release. Some of the result attributes may change names in order to foster naming consistency with the rest of statsmodels. We will provide every effort to provide compatibility with older versions of pandas, however.

We have implemented a very fast set of moving-window linear regression classes in pandas. Two different types of regressions are supported:

  • Standard ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression
  • Multiple regression (OLS-based) on panel data including with fixed-effects (also known as entity or individual effects) or time-effects.

Both kinds of linear models are accessed through the ols function in the pandas namespace. They all take the following arguments to specify either a static (full sample) or dynamic (moving window) regression:

  • window_type: 'full sample' (default), 'expanding', or rolling
  • window: size of the moving window in the window_type='rolling' case. If window is specified, window_type will be automatically set to 'rolling'
  • min_periods: minimum number of time periods to require to compute the regression coefficients

Generally speaking, the ols works by being given a y (response) object and an x (predictors) object. These can take many forms:

  • y: a Series, ndarray, or DataFrame (panel model)
  • x: Series, DataFrame, dict of Series, dict of DataFrame or Panel

Based on the types of y and x, the model will be inferred to either a panel model or a regular linear model. If the y variable is a DataFrame, the result will be a panel model. In this case, the x variable must either be a Panel, or a dict of DataFrame (which will be coerced into a Panel).

Standard OLS regression

Let’s pull in some sample data:

In [275]: from pandas.io.data import DataReader

In [276]: symbols = ['MSFT', 'GOOG', 'AAPL']

In [277]: data = dict((sym, DataReader(sym, "yahoo"))
   .....:             for sym in symbols)
   .....:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
URLError                                  Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-277-f4577f08f45e> in <module>()
      1 data = dict((sym, DataReader(sym, "yahoo"))
----> 2              for sym in symbols)
<ipython-input-277-f4577f08f45e> in <genexpr>((sym,))
      1 data = dict((sym, DataReader(sym, "yahoo"))
----> 2              for sym in symbols)
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/data.pyc in DataReader(name, data_source, start, end, retry_count, pause)
     56     if(data_source == "yahoo"):
     57         return get_data_yahoo(name=name, start=start, end=end,
---> 58                               retry_count=retry_count, pause=pause)
     59     elif(data_source == "fred"):
     60         return get_data_fred(name=name, start=start, end=end)
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/data.pyc in get_data_yahoo(name, start, end, retry_count, pause)
    144 
    145     for _ in range(retry_count):
--> 146         resp = urllib2.urlopen(url)
    147         if resp.code == 200:
    148             lines = resp.read()
/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.pyc in urlopen(url, data, timeout)
    124     if _opener is None:
    125         _opener = build_opener()
--> 126     return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
    127 
    128 def install_opener(opener):
/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.pyc in open(self, fullurl, data, timeout)
    398             req = meth(req)
    399 
--> 400         response = self._open(req, data)
    401 
    402         # post-process response
/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.pyc in _open(self, req, data)
    416         protocol = req.get_type()
    417         result = self._call_chain(self.handle_open, protocol, protocol +
--> 418                                   '_open', req)
    419         if result:
    420             return result
/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.pyc in _call_chain(self, chain, kind, meth_name, *args)
    376             func = getattr(handler, meth_name)
    377 
--> 378             result = func(*args)
    379             if result is not None:
    380                 return result
/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.pyc in http_open(self, req)
   1205 
   1206     def http_open(self, req):
-> 1207         return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
   1208 
   1209     http_request = AbstractHTTPHandler.do_request_
/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.pyc in do_open(self, http_class, req)
   1175         except socket.error, err: # XXX what error?
   1176             h.close()
-> 1177             raise URLError(err)
   1178         else:
   1179             try:
URLError: <urlopen error [Errno -2] Name or service not known>

In [278]: panel = Panel(data).swapaxes('items', 'minor')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AssertionError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-278-07873b3393db> in <module>()
----> 1 panel = Panel(data).swapaxes('items', 'minor')
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/core/panel.pyc in __init__(self, data, items, major_axis, minor_axis, copy, dtype)
    236         self._init_data(
    237             data=data, items=items, major_axis=major_axis, minor_axis=minor_axis,
--> 238             copy=copy, dtype=dtype)
    239 
    240     def _init_data(self, data, copy, dtype, **kwargs):
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/core/panel.pyc in _init_data(self, data, copy, dtype, **kwargs)
    255             dtype = None
    256         elif isinstance(data, (np.ndarray, list)):
--> 257             mgr = self._init_matrix(data, passed_axes, dtype=dtype, copy=copy)
    258             copy = False
    259             dtype = None
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/core/panel.pyc in _init_matrix(self, data, axes, dtype, copy)
    382 
    383     def _init_matrix(self, data, axes, dtype=None, copy=False):
--> 384         values = self._prep_ndarray(self, data, copy=copy)
    385 
    386         if dtype is not None:
/usr/src/tmp/python-module-pandas-buildroot/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/core/panel.pyc in _prep_ndarray(self, values, copy)
   1478             if copy:
   1479                 values = values.copy()
-> 1480         assert(values.ndim == self._AXIS_LEN)
   1481         return values
   1482 
AssertionError: 

In [279]: close_px = panel['Close']
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-279-a66091f76327> in <module>()
----> 1 close_px = panel['Close']
NameError: name 'panel' is not defined

# convert closing prices to returns
In [280]: rets = close_px / close_px.shift(1) - 1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-280-4d4b48582905> in <module>()
----> 1 rets = close_px / close_px.shift(1) - 1
NameError: name 'close_px' is not defined

In [281]: rets.info()
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-281-b45c30505b95> in <module>()
----> 1 rets.info()
NameError: name 'rets' is not defined

Let’s do a static regression of AAPL returns on GOOG returns:

In [282]: model = ols(y=rets['AAPL'], x=rets.ix[:, ['GOOG']])
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-282-06740d688d60> in <module>()
----> 1 model = ols(y=rets['AAPL'], x=rets.ix[:, ['GOOG']])
NameError: name 'rets' is not defined

In [283]: model
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-283-458d5f1afc81> in <module>()
----> 1 model
NameError: name 'model' is not defined

In [284]: model.beta
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-284-0d729d4f44c2> in <module>()
----> 1 model.beta
NameError: name 'model' is not defined

If we had passed a Series instead of a DataFrame with the single GOOG column, the model would have assigned the generic name x to the sole right-hand side variable.

We can do a moving window regression to see how the relationship changes over time:

In [285]: model = ols(y=rets['AAPL'], x=rets.ix[:, ['GOOG']],
   .....:             window=250)
   .....:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-285-77141e77cc71> in <module>()
----> 1 model = ols(y=rets['AAPL'], x=rets.ix[:, ['GOOG']],
      2              window=250)
NameError: name 'rets' is not defined

# just plot the coefficient for GOOG
In [286]: model.beta['GOOG'].plot()
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-286-3fa2144a7140> in <module>()
----> 1 model.beta['GOOG'].plot()
NameError: name 'model' is not defined
_static/moving_lm_ex.png

It looks like there are some outliers rolling in and out of the window in the above regression, influencing the results. We could perform a simple winsorization at the 3 STD level to trim the impact of outliers:

In [287]: winz = rets.copy()
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-287-ef159cc28d64> in <module>()
----> 1 winz = rets.copy()
NameError: name 'rets' is not defined

In [288]: std_1year = rolling_std(rets, 250, min_periods=20)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-288-498f5e1a00b5> in <module>()
----> 1 std_1year = rolling_std(rets, 250, min_periods=20)
NameError: name 'rets' is not defined

# cap at 3 * 1 year standard deviation
In [289]: cap_level = 3 * np.sign(winz) * std_1year
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-289-eceb7c33338e> in <module>()
----> 1 cap_level = 3 * np.sign(winz) * std_1year
NameError: name 'winz' is not defined

In [290]: winz[np.abs(winz) > 3 * std_1year] = cap_level
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-290-dbfbe3507388> in <module>()
----> 1 winz[np.abs(winz) > 3 * std_1year] = cap_level
NameError: name 'cap_level' is not defined

In [291]: winz_model = ols(y=winz['AAPL'], x=winz.ix[:, ['GOOG']],
   .....:             window=250)
   .....:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-291-71948d79df5f> in <module>()
----> 1 winz_model = ols(y=winz['AAPL'], x=winz.ix[:, ['GOOG']],
      2              window=250)
NameError: name 'winz' is not defined

In [292]: model.beta['GOOG'].plot(label="With outliers")
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-292-bf6780a1eec6> in <module>()
----> 1 model.beta['GOOG'].plot(label="With outliers")
NameError: name 'model' is not defined

In [293]: winz_model.beta['GOOG'].plot(label="Winsorized"); plt.legend(loc='best')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-293-815cf4b32c25> in <module>()
----> 1 winz_model.beta['GOOG'].plot(label="Winsorized"); plt.legend(loc='best')
NameError: name 'winz_model' is not defined
_static/moving_lm_winz.png

So in this simple example we see the impact of winsorization is actually quite significant. Note the correlation after winsorization remains high:

In [294]: winz.corrwith(rets)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-294-0230c93d5cfd> in <module>()
----> 1 winz.corrwith(rets)
NameError: name 'winz' is not defined

Multiple regressions can be run by passing a DataFrame with multiple columns for the predictors x:

In [295]: ols(y=winz['AAPL'], x=winz.drop(['AAPL'], axis=1))
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-295-de0445896065> in <module>()
----> 1 ols(y=winz['AAPL'], x=winz.drop(['AAPL'], axis=1))
NameError: name 'winz' is not defined

Panel regression

We’ve implemented moving window panel regression on potentially unbalanced panel data (see this article if this means nothing to you). Suppose we wanted to model the relationship between the magnitude of the daily return and trading volume among a group of stocks, and we want to pool all the data together to run one big regression. This is actually quite easy:

# make the units somewhat comparable
In [296]: volume = panel['Volume'] / 1e8
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-296-81ef33fb51c8> in <module>()
----> 1 volume = panel['Volume'] / 1e8
NameError: name 'panel' is not defined

In [297]: model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)})
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-297-4e7bad5a4523> in <module>()
----> 1 model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)})
NameError: name 'volume' is not defined

In [298]: model
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-298-458d5f1afc81> in <module>()
----> 1 model
NameError: name 'model' is not defined

In a panel model, we can insert dummy (0-1) variables for the “entities” involved (here, each of the stocks) to account the a entity-specific effect (intercept):

In [299]: fe_model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)},
   .....:                entity_effects=True)
   .....:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-299-123d2b0e6684> in <module>()
----> 1 fe_model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)},
      2                 entity_effects=True)
NameError: name 'volume' is not defined

In [300]: fe_model
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-300-e0aa1859f068> in <module>()
----> 1 fe_model
NameError: name 'fe_model' is not defined

Because we ran the regression with an intercept, one of the dummy variables must be dropped or the design matrix will not be full rank. If we do not use an intercept, all of the dummy variables will be included:

In [301]: fe_model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)},
   .....:                entity_effects=True, intercept=False)
   .....:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-301-ebdd062db1f9> in <module>()
----> 1 fe_model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)},
      2                 entity_effects=True, intercept=False)
NameError: name 'volume' is not defined

In [302]: fe_model
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-302-e0aa1859f068> in <module>()
----> 1 fe_model
NameError: name 'fe_model' is not defined

We can also include time effects, which demeans the data cross-sectionally at each point in time (equivalent to including dummy variables for each date). More mathematical care must be taken to properly compute the standard errors in this case:

In [303]: te_model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)},
   .....:                time_effects=True, entity_effects=True)
   .....:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-303-c1e13ca06b73> in <module>()
----> 1 te_model = ols(y=volume, x={'return' : np.abs(rets)},
      2                 time_effects=True, entity_effects=True)
NameError: name 'volume' is not defined

In [304]: te_model
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-304-b9166339d2b5> in <module>()
----> 1 te_model
NameError: name 'te_model' is not defined

Here the intercept (the mean term) is dropped by default because it will be 0 according to the model assumptions, having subtracted off the group means.

Result fields and tests

We’ll leave it to the user to explore the docstrings and source, especially as we’ll be moving this code into statsmodels in the near future.