mbsts {bsts} | R Documentation

## Multivariate Bayesian Structural Time Series

### Description

Fit a multivariate Bayesian structural time series model, also known as a "dynamic factor model."

** NOTE ** This code is experimental. Please feel free to experiment with it and report any bugs to the maintainer. Expect it to improve substantially in the next release.

### Usage

    mbsts(formula,
          shared.state.specification,
          series.state.specification = NULL,
          data = NULL,
          timestamps = NULL,
          series.id = NULL,
          prior = NULL,  # TODO
          opts = NULL,
          contrasts = NULL,
          na.action = na.pass,
          niter,
          ping = niter / 10,
          data.format = c("long", "wide"),
          seed = NULL,
          ...)

### Arguments

`formula` | A formula describing the regression portion of the relationship between y and X. If no regressors are desired then the formula can be replaced by a numeric matrix giving the multivariate time series to be modeled.
`shared.state.specification` | A list with elements created by `AddSharedLocalLevel`, and similar functions for adding components of state. This list defines the components of state which are shared across all time series. These are the "factors" in the dynamic factor model.

`series.state.specification`

This argument specifies state components needed by a particular series. Not all series need have the same state components (e.g. some series may require a seasonal component, while others do not). It can be `NULL`, indicating that there are no series-specific state components.

It can be a list of elements created by `AddLocalLevel`, `AddSeasonal`, and similar functions for adding state component to scalar bsts models. In this case the same, independent, individual components will be added to each series. For example, each series will get its own independent Seasonal state component if AddSeasonal was used to add a seasonal component to this argument.

In its most general form, this argument can be a list of lists, some of which can be NULL, but with non-NULL lists specifying state components for individual series, as above.

`data` | An optional data frame, list or environment (or object coercible by `as.data.frame` to a data frame) containing the variables mentioned in the `formula` argument. If not found in `data`, the variables are taken from `environment(formula)`, typically the environment from which `bsts` is called.
`timestamps` | A vector of timestamps indicating the time of each observation. If `data.format` is `"long"` then this argument is required. If "wide" data is passed then it is optional. TODO: TEST THIS under wide and long formats in regression and non-regression settings.
`series.id` | A factor (or object coercible to factor) indicating the series to which each observation in "long" format belongs. This argument is ignored for data in "wide" format.
`prior` | A list of `SpikeSlabPrior` objects, one for each time series. Or this argument can be NULL in which case a default prior will be used. Note that the prior is on both the regression coefficients and the residual sd for each time series.
`opts` | A list containing model options. This is currently only used for debugging, so leave this as `NULL`.

`contrasts`

An optional list containing the names of contrast functions to use when converting factors numeric variables in a regression formula. This argument works exactly as it does in `lm`. The names of the list elements correspond to factor variables in your model formula. The list elements themselves are the names of contrast functions (see `help(contr.treatment)` and the `contrasts.arg` argument to `model.matrix.default`). This argument is only used if a model formula is specified, and even then the default is probably what you want.

`na.action` | What to do about missing values. The default is to allow missing responses, but no missing predictors. Set this to na.omit or na.exclude if you want to omit missing responses altogether.
`niter` | A positive integer giving the desired number of MCMC draws.
`ping` | A scalar giving the desired frequency of status messages. If ping > 0 then the program will print a status message to the screen every `ping` MCMC iterations.
`data.format` | Whether the data are store in wide (each row is a time point, and columns are values from different series) or long (each row is the value of a particular series at a particular point in time) format. For `"long"` see `timestamps` and `series.id`.
`seed` | An integer to use as the random seed for the underlying C++ code. If `NULL` then the seed will be set using the clock.
`...` | Extra arguments to be passed to `SpikeSlabPrior` (see the entry for the `prior` argument, above).

### Value

An object of class `mbsts` which is a list with the following components

`coefficients` | A `niter` by `ncol(X)` matrix of MCMC draws of the regression coefficients, where `X` is the design matrix implied by `formula`. This is only present if a model formula was supplied.
`sigma.obs` | A vector of length `niter` containing MCMC draws of the residual standard deviation.

The returned object will also contain named elements holding the MCMC draws of model parameters belonging to the state models. The names of each component are supplied by the entries in `state.specification`. If a model parameter is a scalar, then the list element is a vector with `niter` elements. If the parameter is a vector then the list element is a matrix with `niter` rows. If the parameter is a matrix then the list element is a 3-way array with first dimension `niter`.

Finally, if a model formula was supplied, then the returned object will contain the information necessary for the predict method to build the design matrix when a new prediction is made.

### Author(s)

Steven L. Scott steve.the.bayesian@gmail.com

### References

Harvey (1990), "Forecasting, structural time series, and the Kalman filter", Cambridge University Press.

Durbin and Koopman (2001), "Time series analysis by state space methods", Oxford University Press.

Goerge and McCulloch (1997) "Approaches for Bayesian variable selection", Statistica Sinica pp 339–374.

### See Also

`bsts`, `AddLocalLevel`, `AddLocalLinearTrend`, `AddSemilocalLinearTrend`, `AddSeasonal` `AddDynamicRegression` `SpikeSlabPrior`, `SdPrior`.

### Examples

    seed <- 8675309
    set.seed(seed)

    ntimes <- 250
    nseries <- 20
    nfactors <- 6
    residual.sd <- 1.2
    state.innovation.sd <- .75

    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## simulate latent state for fake data.
    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    state <- matrix(rnorm(ntimes * nfactors, 0, state.innovation.sd), nrow = ntimes)
    for (i in 1:ncol(state)) {
      state[, i] <- cumsum(state[, i])
    }

    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## Simulate "observed" data from state.
    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    observation.coefficients <- matrix(rnorm(nseries * nfactors), nrow = nseries)
    print("observation.coefficients =\n", observation.coefficients)
    diag(observation.coefficients) <- 1.0
    observation.coefficients[upper.tri(observation.coefficients)] <- 0

    errors <- matrix(rnorm(nseries * ntimes, 0, residual.sd), ncol = ntimes)
    y <- t(observation.coefficients %*% t(state) + errors)

    ## Not run:
    cat("simulated y (first 10 rows): \n")
    print(y[1:10, ])

    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## Plot the data.
    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    par(mfrow=c(1,2))
    plot.ts(y, plot.type="single", col = rainbow(nseries), main = "observed data")
    plot.ts(state, plot.type = "single", col = 1:nfactors, main = "latent state")

    ## End(Not run)

    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## Fit the model
    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ss <- AddSharedLocalLevel(list(), y, nfactors = nfactors)

    opts <- list("fixed.state" = t(state),
      fixed.residual.sd = rep(residual.sd, nseries),
      fixed.regression.coefficients = matrix(rep(0, nseries), ncol = 1))

    model <- mbsts(y, shared.state.specification = ss, niter = 100,
      data.format = "wide", seed = seed)

    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## Plot the state
    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    par(mfrow=c(1, nfactors))
    ylim <- range(model$shared.state, state)
    for (j in 1:nfactors) {
      PlotDynamicDistribution(model$shared.state[, j, ], ylim=ylim)
      lines(state[, j], col = "blue")
    }

    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## Plot the factor loadings.
    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## Not run:
    opar <- par(mfrow=c(nfactors,1), mar=c(0, 4, 0, 4), omi=rep(.25, 4))
    burn <- 10
    for(j in 1:nfactors) {
      BoxplotTrue(model$shared.local.level.coefficients[-(1:burn), j, ],
        t(observation.coefficients[, j]), axes=F, truth.color="blue")
      abline(h=0, lty=3)
      box()
      axis(2)
    }
    axis(1)
    par(opar)

    ## End(Not run)

    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ## Plot the predicted values of the series.
    ##---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    index <- 1:12
    nr <- floor(sqrt(length(index)))
    nc <- ceiling(length(index) / nr)
    opar <- par(mfrow = c(nr, nc), mar = c(2, 4, 1, 2))
    for (i in index) {
      PlotDynamicDistribution(
        model$shared.state.contributions[, 1, i, ]
        + model$regression.coefficients[, i, 1]
      , ylim=range(y))
      points(y[, i], col="blue", pch = ".", cex = .2)
    }
    par(opar)

[Package bsts version 0.9.1 Index]