[R] spectrum

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Andreas Pauling wrote:

> I have two questions about estimating the spectral power of a
> time series:
> 
> 1) I came across a funny thing with the following code:
> 
> data(co2)
> par(mfrow=c(2,1))
> co2.sp1<-spectrum(co2,detrend=T,demean=T,span=3)
> co2.sp2<-spectrum(co2[1:468],detrend=T,demean=T,span=3)
> 
> The first plot displays the frequencies ranging from 0 to 6
> whearas the second plot displays the same curve but with
> frequencies between 0 and .5 although it is based on the same
> data (length(co2)=468). Why does the selection (co2[1:468])
> determine the vector of frequencies and plot it obviously
> incorrectly?

It is correct!  co2[1:468] is not a time series: you should be using 
window() to subset time series.  So you supplied a vector which does not 
have a frequency (or a start or an end) and default values are used.

Did you consider actually looking at co2[1:468]?


> Generally, is it possible to choose the vector of frequencies at
> which the spectral density is estimated and plotted?

Wait a minute: spectrum() does not estimate a spectral density but calls 
helper functions to do so.  Please consult their help pages.  The answer 
is a qualified `yes'.

> 2) How can the significance of the peaks be tested?

Not an R question, and not well enough defined for a short answer.  See 
any good book on time series.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595