R help - Oct 2011 - Beginner's question about plotting variables in a time series object with the date on the x axis

Dear R helpers,
 
I am a beginner at R so please be gentle :) 
I have already read manuals and FAQs, with no help.
I have a monthly time series data on public debt with 40 variables, it starts on
January 1994 and ends on June 2011.
I am loading the data into R using read.csv and the data looks ok when I do
edit(dados):
> dados<-read.csv("dadosR3.csv", header=T)
then I tried making it into a time series object, using:
> dados2<-ts(dados, start = c(1994,1), frequency=12)
 
Now when I try plotting any of the variables, for example divliq.pib (net debt),
the date doesn't appear on the x axis. How can I do this?
I use
> plot.ts(divliq.pib)
 
also the function names() doesn't work, which would be important since I
have so many variables.
> names(dados2)
NULL
 
I am using R.2.13.1
 
Thank you very much.
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

I'm not a huge fan of using R's ts class directly, much preferring to
use zoo or xts (both of which are packages) to enhance. That said, I
think your problem comes from identifying the data/variable name
incorrectly. You've only "ts"ed dados, but you try to plot
divliq.pib;
try

plot(dados[,"divliq.pib"])

instead. To get the names functionality, add the optional argument
names= to the ts() call.

If you go to xts, the following should work just fine for you:

library(xts)
dados<-read.csv("dadosR3.csv", header=T)
dados<-xts(dados[,-1], as.Date(dados[,1])) # Assuming your date was in
the left hand column

Now dados will have its names inherited from the header of the CSV and
you can plot them directly as

plot(dados[,"divliq.pib"])

Hope this helps,

Michael Weylandt

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Iara Faria <iaragohn at yahoo.com.br>
wrote:
> Dear R helpers,
>
> I am a beginner at R so please be gentle :)
> I have already read manuals and FAQs, with no help.
> I have a monthly?time series data on public debt with 40 variables, it
starts on January 1994 and ends on June 2011.
> I am loading the data into R using read.csv and the data looks ok when I do
edit(dados):
>> dados<-read.csv("dadosR3.csv", header=T)
> then I tried making it into a time series object, using:
>> dados2<-ts(dados, start = c(1994,1), frequency=12)
>
> Now when I try plotting any of the variables, for example divliq.pib (net
debt), the date doesn't appear on the x axis. How can I do this?
> I use
>> plot.ts(divliq.pib)
>
> also the function names() doesn't work, which would be important since
I have so many variables.
>> names(dados2)
> NULL
>
> I am using R.2.13.1
>
> Thank you very much.
> ? ? ? ?[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>

On Oct 17, 2011, at 5:23 PM, Iara Faria wrote:
> Dear R helpers,
>
> I am a beginner at R so please be gentle :)
> I have already read manuals and FAQs, with no help.
> I have a monthly time series data on public debt with 40 variables,  
> it starts on January 1994 and ends on June 2011.
I agree with Weyland. Figuring out how to use class `ts` objects in R  
is difficult. If it were easy I don't think Zeileis would have  
invented `zoo`.
> I am loading the data into R using read.csv and the data looks ok  
> when I do edit(dados):
>> dados<-read.csv("dadosR3.csv", header=T)
> then I tried making it into a time series object, using:
>> dados2<-ts(dados, start = c(1994,1), frequency=12)
(See below for what that did.)
>
> Now when I try plotting any of the variables, for example divliq.pib  
> (net debt), the date doesn't appear on the x axis. How can I do this?
> I use
>> plot.ts(divliq.pib)

Try:

plot(time(dados2), dados[, "divliq.pib"] , xy.labels=FALSE))
>
> also the function names() doesn't work, which would be important  
> since I have so many variables.
>> names(dados2)
Read the help page again(?). "A data frame will be coerced to a  
numeric matrix via data.matrix."

The names function only works for lists and name vectors. Try colnames()
> NULL
>
> I am using R.2.13.1
>
> Thank you very much.
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT