Re: Series of Percentage Changes
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg96834] Re: Series of Percentage Changes
- From: dh <dh at metrohm.com>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:51:44 -0500 (EST)
- References: <go31da$f5u$1@smc.vnet.net>
Hi Gregory, you may use MapThread together with a function thta checks its arguments. E.g.: fun = If[NumericQ[#1] && NumericQ[#2], (#2 - #1)/#1, NA] &; MapThread[fun, {Most[theList], Rest[theList]}] hope this helps, Daniel Gregory Lypny wrote: > Hello everyone, > > We can transform a series to percentage changes by using > > (Differences@theList)/(Most@theList) > > or > > (Rest@theList/Most@theList) - 1 > > However, Mathematica will smartly difference symbols as well as > numeric values, so the difference of adjacent null elements will be > zero (Null - Null = 0), resulting in a percentage change of zero, and > so will adjacent elements with a string, such as "NA" or "Missing", > that denotes a missing value. The trouble is, you may want to have > missing values flagged in the resulting percentage change series just > as they were in the original series. > > I wrote the following little function, which makes use of a Do loop, > to take care of missing values and instances of division by zero, but > I was wondering whether there is a more elegant way to incorporate the > conditions with functions such as Rest and Most and perhaps avoid the > use of the loop. > > percentageChange[theList_] := Module[{tmpList, tmpElements}, > (tmpList = Array[tmpElements, (Length@theList) - 1]; > Do[tmpList[[t - 1]] = > If[theList[[t - 1]] != 0 && NumberQ[theList[[t - 1]]] && > NumberQ[theList[[t]]], theList[[t]]/theList[[t - 1]] - 1, > "NA"], {t, > 2, Length@theList}]; > tmpList)]; > > > Regards, > > Gregory > >