Temporal data classes in R
Manipulating Time Series Data in R
Harrison Brown
Graduate Researcher in Geography
Date-time classes
numeric- Integers, floating point, etc.
- August 9, 2022 =
19223 - Number of days since Jan. 1, 1970
character- Strings of text, names, etc.
- August 9, 2022 =
"2022-08-09" - August 9, 2022 =
"August 9, 2022"
Date-time classes
Date- Dates, days of the year
- August 9, 2022 =
"2022-08-09"
start_date <- as_date("2022-08-01")
end_date <- as_date("2022-08-09")
end_date - start_date
Time difference of 8 days
POSIXct- Dates and times, time zones
- August 9, 2022, 4:17 p.m. =
"2022-08-09 20:17:00 UTC"
start_time <-
as.POSIXct("2022-08-01 08:57:00 EDT")
end_time <-
as.POSIXct("2022-08-09 15:30:00 EDT")
end_time - start_time
Time difference of 8.272917 days
Lubridate
lubridate::as_date()
my_date <- as_date("2022-01-20")
my_date
[1] "2022-01-20"
class(my_date)
[1] "Date"
as_date() versus base::as.Date()
- Better support for time zones
- Warnings for invalid date formats
- Easier conversions from
numeric - ...
Testing data classes
class("2022-08-01")
[1] "character"
is.numeric(10494)
[1] TRUE
is.character("April 01, 2003")
[1] TRUE
is.Date(lubridate::today())
[1] TRUE
is.POSIXct(lubridate::now())
[1] TRUE
Let's practice!
Manipulating Time Series Data in R
