Computational tools¶
Statistical Functions¶
Percent Change¶
Series
, DataFrame
, and Panel
all have a method
pct_change()
to compute the percent change over a given number
of periods (using fill_method
to fill NA/null values before computing
the percent change).
In [1]: ser = pd.Series(np.random.randn(8))
In [2]: ser.pct_change()
Out[2]:
0 NaN
1 -1.602976
2 4.334938
3 -0.247456
4 -2.067345
5 -1.142903
6 -1.688214
7 -9.759729
dtype: float64
In [3]: df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(10, 4))
In [4]: df.pct_change(periods=3)
Out[4]:
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¶
Series.cov()
can be used to compute covariance between series
(excluding missing values).
In [5]: s1 = pd.Series(np.random.randn(1000))
In [6]: s2 = pd.Series(np.random.randn(1000))
In [7]: s1.cov(s2)
Out[7]: 0.00068010881743110871
Analogously, DataFrame.cov()
to compute pairwise covariances among the
series in the DataFrame, also excluding NA/null values.
Note
Assuming the missing data are missing at random this results in an estimate for the covariance matrix which is unbiased. However, for many applications this estimate may not be acceptable because the estimated covariance matrix is not guaranteed to be positive semi-definite. This could lead to estimated correlations having absolute values which are greater than one, and/or a non-invertible covariance matrix. See Estimation of covariance matrices for more details.
In [8]: frame = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(1000, 5), columns=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
In [9]: frame.cov()
Out[9]:
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 [10]: frame = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(20, 3), columns=['a', 'b', 'c'])
In [11]: frame.loc[frame.index[:5], 'a'] = np.nan
In [12]: frame.loc[frame.index[5:10], 'b'] = np.nan
In [13]: frame.cov()
Out[13]:
a b c
a 1.123670 -0.412851 0.018169
b -0.412851 1.154141 0.305260
c 0.018169 0.305260 1.301149
In [14]: frame.cov(min_periods=12)