Here we will walk through how to use the bayesdfa package to fit
dynamic factor analysis (DFA) models with covariates.
Notation review for DFA models
Covariates in dynamic factor analysis are generally included in the
observation model, rather than the process model. Without covariates,
the model can be expressed as
\[{x}_{t}={x}_{t-1}+{e}_t\\ { e }_{ t
}\sim MVN(0,\textbf{Q})\\ { y }_{ t }=\textbf{Z}{ x }_{ t }+{ v }_{ t
}\\ { v }_{ t }\sim MVN(0,\textbf{R})\]
where the matrix \(\textbf{Z}\) is
dimensioned as the number of time series by number of trends, and maps
the observed data \(y_{t}\) to the
latent trends \(x_{t}\).
Observation covariates
Observation covariates can be \[{x}_{t}={x}_{t-1}+{e}_t\\ { e }_{ t }\sim
MVN(0,\textbf{Q})\\ { y }_{ t }=\textbf{Z}{ x }_{ t }+\textbf{D}{ d }_{
t }+{ v }_{ t }\\ { v }_{ t }\sim MVN(0,\textbf{R})\] where the
matrix \(\textbf{D}\) represents time
series by number of covariates at time \(t\). For a single covariate, such as
temperature, this would mean estimating \(P\) parameters, where \(P\) is the number of time series. For a
model including 2 covariates, the number of estimated coefficients would
be \(2P\) and so forth.
Process covariates
Process covariates on the trends are less common but can be written
as \[{x}_{t}={x}_{t-1}+\textbf{C}{ c }_{ t
}+{e}_t\\ { e }_{ t }\sim MVN(0,\textbf{Q})\\ { y }_{ t }=\textbf{Z}{ x
}_{ t }+{ v }_{ t }\\ { v }_{ t }\sim MVN(0,\textbf{R})\] where
the matrix \(\textbf{C}\) represents
the number of trends by number of covariates at time \(t\). For a single trend, this would mean
estimating \(K\) parameters, where
\(K\) is the number of trends. For a
model including 2 covariates, the number of estimated coefficients would
be \(2K\) and so forth.
Examples – observation covariates
We’ll start by simulating some random trends using the
sim_dat function,
set.seed(1)
sim_dat <- sim_dfa(
num_trends = 1,
num_years = 20,
num_ts = 4
)
Next, we can add a covariate effect to the trend estimate,
x. For example,
cov = expand.grid("time"=1:20, "timeseries"=1:4, "covariate"=1)
cov$value = rnorm(nrow(cov),0,0.1)
for(i in 1:nrow(cov)) {
sim_dat$y[cov$timeseries[i],cov$time[i]] = sim_dat$pred[cov$timeseries[i],cov$time[i]] +
c(0.1,0.2,0.3,0.4)[cov$timeseries[i]]*cov$value[i]
}
And now fit the model with fit_dfa
mod = fit_dfa(y = sim_dat$y, obs_covar = cov, num_trends = 1,
chains=chains, iter=iter)
We can then make plots of the true and estimated trend,
plot(c(sim_dat$x), xlab="Time", ylab="True trend")
plot_trends(rotate_trends(mod)) + ylab("Estimated trend") + theme_bw()
This approach could be modified to have covariates not affecting some
time series. For example, if we didn’t want the covariate to affect the
last time series, we could say
cov = cov[which(cov$timeseries!=4),]
And then again fit the model
mod = fit_dfa(y = sim_dat$y, obs_covar = cov, num_trends = trends,
chains=chains)
Examples – process covariates
As a cautionary note, there’s some identifiability issues with
including covariates in the process model. Covariates need to be
standardized or centered prior to being included. Future versions of
this vignette will include more clear examples and recommendations.
We’ll start by simulating some random trends using the
sim_dat function,
set.seed(1)
sim_dat <- sim_dfa(
num_trends = 2,
num_years = 20,
num_ts = 3
)
Next, we can add a covariate effect to the trend estimate,
x. For example,
cov = rnorm(20, 0, 1)
b_pro = c(1,0.3)
x = matrix(0,2,20)
for(i in 1:2) {
x[i,1] = cov[1]*b_pro[i]
}
for(i in 2:length(cov)) {
x[1,i] = x[1,i-1] + cov[i]*b_pro[1] + rnorm(1,0,1)
x[2,i] = x[2,i-1] + cov[i]*b_pro[2] + rnorm(1,0,1)
}
y = sim_dat$Z %*% x
And now fit the model with fit_dfa
pro_cov = expand.grid("trend"=1:2, "time"=1:20, "covariate"=1)
pro_cov$value = cov[pro_cov$time]
mod = fit_dfa(y = sim_dat$y, pro_covar = pro_cov, num_trends = 2,
chains=chains, iter=iter)
These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.