trendseries: extract trends from time series

trendseries provides a unified interface to extract trends, cycles, and seasonal components from time series. Most filtering methods in R are designed for ts objects, but datasets typically come in a data.frame format with a date column, which makes applying filters cumbersome. trendseries bridges this gap: augment_trends(), decompose_series(), deseason_series(), and detrend_series() all work directly on data.frame/tibble objects, while extract_trends() provides the same methods for ts/xts/zoo objects when you need to stay in native time-series format.

Installation

trendseries is available on CRAN

install.packages("trendseries")

You can install the newest version of trendseries from R-Universe.

install.packages(
  'trendseries',
  repos = c(
    'https://viniciusoike.r-universe.dev',
    'https://cloud.r-project.org'
  )
)

Core Functions

Six core functions cover data.frame/tibble/data.table workflows.

• augment_trends(): adds trend columns to the original dataset.
• augment_rolling(): add rolling window trend columns to the original dataset.
• decompose_series(): splits a series into trend, seasonal, and remainder components.
• deseason_series(): wraps decompose_series() to return a seasonally adjusted series.
• detrend_series(): wraps augment_trends() to return the deviation from trend (the cycle).
• index_series(): rescales one or more series to a common base period and value.

Some functions like augment_trends() also have a ts/xts/zoo-native counterpart via extract_trends(), for workflows that stay in native time-series format.

augment_trends() and detrend_series() also accept tsibbles with Date, yearmonth, or yearquarter indices. They use the tsibble index and key as defaults and return a tsibble. The tsibble package is optional.

Usage

The example below computes three filters (HP, STL, and moving average) on a quarterly index of construction activity. augment_trends() detects the frequency of the data and picks conventional defaults for the HP filter.

library(trendseries)
library(ggplot2)
data(gdp_construction)
# Computes multiple trends at once
series <- gdp_construction |>
  # Automatically detects frequency
  # Trends are added as new columns to the original dataset
  augment_trends(
    value_col = "index",
    methods = c("hp", "stl", "ma")
  )
#> Auto-detected quarterly (4 obs/year)

series
#> # A tibble: 124 × 5
#>    date       index trend_hp trend_stl trend_ma
#>    <date>     <dbl>    <dbl>     <dbl>    <dbl>
#>  1 1995-01-01 100       101.     102.      NA  
#>  2 1995-04-01 100       101.     101.      NA  
#>  3 1995-07-01 100       102.     100.      99.7
#>  4 1995-10-01 100       103.      99.4     99.6
#>  5 1996-01-01  97.8     103.     101.     101. 
#>  6 1996-04-01 101.      104.     102.     102. 
#>  7 1996-07-01 107.      104.     103.     103. 
#>  8 1996-10-01 103.      105.     104.     104. 
#>  9 1997-01-01 101.      106.     106.     106. 
#> 10 1997-04-01 108.      106.     109.     109. 
#> # ℹ 114 more rows

An equivalent extract_trends() function is also available for ts objects.

stl_trend <- extract_trends(AirPassengers, methods = "stl")
#> Computing STL trend with s.window = periodic
plot.ts(AirPassengers)
lines(stl_trend, col = "#C53030")

Available Methods

The Trend Extraction Methods article describes each one: when to use it and which parameters it takes.

Learn More

To learn more about the package be sure to visit the webiste

The vignettes below cover each function in detail.

• Introduction to trendseries

• Augmenting Trends

• Decomposing Series

• Detrending Series

• Trend Extraction Methods

• Moving Averages

• Econometric Filters

Included data and attribution

The package includes daily Arabica and Robusta coffee price indicators from the Centro de Estudos Avançados em Economia Aplicada (CEPEA), Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ), Universidade de São Paulo (USP). See the Arabica and Robusta source series, and the Arabica methodology and Robusta methodology.

CEPEA identifies its coffee data as available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. That license applies to the CEPEA-derived data; the package code is licensed under MIT. The bundled data are an adapted version: usd_2022 is calculated from the source dollar price using U.S. inflation data, and trend_ma is a 22-observation moving-average column. The current bundled release contains only missing values in trend_ma.

Suggested attribution:

Centro de Estudos Avançados em Economia Aplicada (CEPEA), Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), CEPEA/ESALQ coffee price indicators, CC BY-NC 4.0; adapted in trendseries. This attribution does not imply CEPEA endorses the package.

TfL Network Demand data

trendseries includes transit_london_monthly and transit_london_avgs, which are derived from Transport for London’s (TfL) daily Journeys files. The source covers Bus and Tube journeys only; it is distinct from TfL’s station-footfall files. The bundled snapshot contains daily records from 2019-01-01 through 2025-12-27. TfL can revise historical rows when the source files are refreshed, so these datasets should be treated as a versioned snapshot rather than a live feed.

transit_london_monthly sums the reported daily journey counts by calendar month. transit_london_avgs calculates the mean daily count by month, mode, and UK business-day status. The counts are recorded ticketing activity, not an absolute measure of passenger numbers or journeys made; they exclude people who did not tap in or out and are approximate, rounded to the nearest thousand.

Source and methodology: TfL Network demand data, the Network Demand Dashboard, and TfL’s Transport Data Service terms.

Required attribution:

Powered by TfL Open Data

The package is not affiliated with or endorsed by TfL.

ONS Retail Sales Index data

The package also includes a processed subset of the ONS Retail Sales Index, specifically Table 3M’s non-seasonally adjusted chained volume indices for selected retail sectors in Great Britain. See the ONS Retail Sales Index methodology for details on coverage and methods. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated.