AutovarCore

AutovarCore finds the best fitting VAR models for a given time series data set that pass the selected set of residual assumptions. AutovarCore will also generate Granger causality networks given a data frame (this functionality is not yet implemented). AutovarCore is a simplified/efficient version of Autovar.

To install, type the following:

install.packages('devtools')
devtools::install_github('roqua/autovarCore')

For more information on Autovar, see autovar.nl. Help documentation for AutovarCore can be found on autovarcore.nl.

Should I use Autovar or AutovarCore?

You should use Autovar if you

Prefer a slightly better model fit over a model with less outlier dummies (less outlier dummies means that the model explains more of the measurements).
Are okay with Autovar sometimes returning NULL because it could not find any models that passed all residual tests.
Need VAR models with more than one lag or with zero lags.
Need models with automatically determined restrictions.
Need debugging information such as a full list of all evaluated models.
Want detailed summary information such as a plot of contemporaneous correlations or Granger causalities.
Need named dummy variables for interpretation (e.g., "morning", "afternoon", "Monday", "Tuesday" instead of "day_part_1", "day_part_1", "day_3", "day_4")

You should use AutovarCore if you

Prefer a model with less outlier dummies over a model with a slightly better model fit (less outlier dummies means that the model explains more of the measurements).
Always want a list of best models even if those do not pass all residual tests at the default p-level (this is indicated by the 'bucket' property, see ?autovar for details).
Are not interested in any models except for models with lag 1 and models with lag 2 where the second lag is autoregressive only.
May have missing data (i.e., NA values). Autovar also has a function "impute_dataframe" to impute values, but AutovarCore does this automatically (if needed).
Need more flexibility as to which residual tests should constitute model validity (e.g., portmanteau, portmanteau_squared, skewness, kurtosis, joint_sktest). Autovar uses a fixed set of residual tests.
Deem performance to be an issue and prefer memory-efficient and fast code.

Example use

library('autovarCore')

# AutovarCore requires input data in data.frame format.
# If you have data in a .csv, .dta, or .sav file, use
# the 'foreign' library to load this data into R first.
# (You may need to type:
#    install.packages('foreign')
#  if you do not have the foreign library installed on
#  your system.)
library('foreign')

# This example data set can be downloaded from
# https://autovar.nl/datasets/aug_pp5_da.sav
suppressWarnings(dfile <- read.spss('~/Downloads/aug_pp5_da.sav'))
dframe <- data.frame(Activity = dfile$Activity, Depression = dfile$Depression)

# Call autovar with the given data frame. Type:
#   ?autovar
# (after having typed "library('autovarCore')") to see 
# which other options are available.
models_found <- autovar(dframe, selected_column_names = c('Activity', 'Depression'))

# Show details for the best model found
print(models_found[[1]])