arima model for multiple seasonalities in R

Question

I'm learning to create a forecasting model for time series that has multiple seasonalities. Following is the subset of dataset that I'm refering to. This dataset includes hourly data points and I wish to include daily as well as weekly seasonalities in my arima model. Following is the subset of dataset:

data= c(4,4,1,2,6,21,105,257,291,172,72,10,35,42,77,72,133,192,122,59,29,25,24,5,7,3,3,0,7,15,91,230,284,147,67,53,54,55,63,73,114,154,137,57,27,31,25,11,4,4,4,2,7,18,68,218,251,131,71,43,55,62,63,80,120,144,107,42,27,11,10,16,8,10,7,1,4,3,12,17,58,59,68,76,91,95,89,115,107,107,41,40,25,18,14,15,6,12,2,4,1,6,9,14,43,67,67,94,100,129,126,122,132,118,68,26,19,12,9,5,4,2,5,1,3,16,89,233,304,174,53,55,53,52,59,92,117,214,139,73,37,28,15,11,8,1,2,5,4,22,103,258,317,163,58,29,37,46,54,62,95,197,152,58,32,30,17,9,8,1,3,1,3,16,109,245,302,156,53,34,47,46,54,65,102,155,116,51,30,24,17,10,7,4,8,0,11,0,2,225,282,141,4,87,44,60,52,74,135,157,113,57,44,26,29,17,8,7,4,4,2,10,57,125,182,100,33,27,41,39,35,50,69,92,66,30,11,10,11,9,6,5,10,4,1,7,9,17,24,21,29,28,48,38,30,21,26,25,35,10,9,4,4,4,3,5,4,4,4,3,5,10,16,28,47,63,40,49,28,22,18,27,18,10,5,8,7,3,2,2,4,1,4,19,59,167,235,130,57,45,46,42,40,49,64,96,54,27,17,18,15,7,6,2,3,1,2,21,88,187,253,130,77,47,49,48,53,77,109,147,109,45,41,35,16,13)

The code I'm trying to use is following:

tsdata = ts (data, frequency = 24)

aicvalstemp = NULL
aicvals= NULL

for (i in 1:5) {
  for (j in 1:5) {
    xreg1 = fourier(tsdata,i,24)
    xreg2 = fourier(tsdata,j,168)
    xregs = cbind(xreg1,xreg2)
    armodel = auto.arima(bike_TS_west, xreg = xregs)
    aicvalstemp = cbind(i,j,armodel$aic)
    aicvals = rbind(aicvals,aicvalstemp)
  }

}

The cbind command in the above command fails because the number of rows in xreg1 and xreg2 are different. I even tried using 1:length(data) argument in the fourier function but that also gave me an error. If someone can rectify the mistakes in the above code to produce a forecast of next 24 hours using an arima model with minimum AIC values, it would be really helpful. Also if you can include datasplitting in your code by creating training and testing data sets, it would be totally awesome. Thanks for your help.

When i=1 and j=1 your object aicvals doesn't exist yet. This could create some problem in the rbind of your last line. Maybe you need something like this: if (i==1 & j==1) aicvals<-aicvalstemp else aicvals <- rbind(aicvals,aicvalstemp). — GPierre
@GPierre I tried initializing their value to NULL as well at the beginning but still it doesn't work. See the edited code. — Harshit Saxena

Mark S Mark S · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-06T23:32:57

I don't understand the desire to fit a weekly "season" to these data as there is no evidence for one in the data subset you provided. Also, you should really log-transform the data because they do not reflect a Gaussian process as is.

So, here's how you could fit models with a some form of hourly signals.

## the data are not normal, so log transform to meet assumption of Gaussian errors
ln_dat <- log(tsdata)
## number of hours to forecast
hrs_out <- 24
## max number of Fourier terms
max_F <- 5
## empty list for model fits
mod_res <- vector("list", max_F)
## fit models with increasing Fourier terms
for (i in 1:max_F) {
  xreg <- fourier(ln_dat,i)
  mod_res[[i]] <- auto.arima(tsdata, xreg = xreg)
}
## table of AIC results
aic_tbl <- data.frame(F=seq(max_F), AIC=sapply(mod_res, AIC))
## number of Fourier terms in best model
F_best <- which(aic_tbl$AIC==min(aic_tbl$AIC))
## forecast from best model
fore <- forecast(mod_res[[F_best]], xreg=fourierf(ln_dat,F_best,hrs_out))

arima model for multiple seasonalities in R

1 Answers