We explore the core functionalities of time series analysis in Pandas, providing a guide to harnessing its power for your data.
Understanding Time Series Data
Time series data is a sequence of data points collected or recorded at regular time intervals. This can include stock prices, weather records, sales data over time, and more. The key aspect of time series data is its temporal ordering. Analyzing this type of data can reveal trends, cycles, and seasonal variations.
Getting Started with Time Series in Pandas
To begin working with time series data in Pandas, you first need to understand the primary time-related classes:
- Timestamp: Represents a single timestamp and is interchangeable with Python’s datetime in most cases.
- DatetimeIndex: A collection of Timestamps, used as an index for Series or DataFrame.
- Period: Represents a single time span, such as a specific day or month.
Basic Time Series Manipulations
Parsing Dates: Convert your date columns into datetime objects using to_datetime function.
df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'])
Setting the Index: Time series data typically uses dates/times as an index.
df.set_index('date', inplace=True)
Slicing Time Series: Easily slice your data between two dates or periods.
recent = df['2020-01-01':'2020-12-31']
Resampling and Frequency Conversion
Resampling involves changing the frequency of your time series observations. Two types of resampling are:
- Downsampling: Decreasing the frequency of the data points (e.g., from days to months).
- Upsampling: Increasing the frequency of the data points (e.g., from minutes to seconds).
Pandas provides the resample function to organize and manipulate data at different frequencies.
monthly_data = df.resample('M').mean()
Time Series Analysis Tools in Pandas
- Rolling Statistics: Apply functions like rolling.mean or rolling.sum to create rolling windows and calculate statistics over them.
- Time Shifting: Shift the data points forward or backward in time with shift or tshift.
- Time Zone Handling: Convert time zone-aware timestamp objects to different time zones.
For more complex analyses, including trend decomposition or forecasting, you might need to integrate Pandas with other libraries like statsmodels or SciPy.