# Rolling calculations in tibbletime

#### Davis Vaughan

#### 2020-07-21

# Introducing rollify()

A common task in financial analyses is to perform a rolling calculation. This might be a single value like a rolling mean or standard deviation, or it might be more complicated like a rolling linear regression. To account for this flexibility, `tibbletime` has the `rollify()` function. This function allows you to turn any function into a rolling version of itself.

In the `tidyverse`, this type of function is known as an adverb because it modifies an existing function, which are typically given verb names.

## Datasets required

    library(tibbletime)
    library(dplyr)
    library(tidyr)

    # Facebook stock prices.
    data(FB)

    # Only a few columns
    FB <- select(FB, symbol, date, open, close, adjusted)

## A rolling average

To calculate a rolling average, picture a column in a data frame where you take the average of the values in rows 1-5, then in rows 2-6, then in 3-7, and so on until you reach the end of the dataset. This type of 5-period moving window is a rolling calculation, and is often used to smooth out noise in a dataset.

Let’s see how to do this with `rollify()`.

    # The function to use at each step is `mean`.
    # The window size is 5
    rolling_mean <- rollify(mean, window = 5)

    rolling_mean

    ## function (...)
    ## {
    ##     roller(..., .f = .f, window = window, unlist = unlist, na_value = na_value)
    ## }
    ## <bytecode: 0x7ff47d871208>
    ## <environment: 0x7ff47d8741c8>

We now have a rolling version of the function, `mean()`. You use it in a similar way to how you might use `mean()`.

    mutate(FB, mean_5 = rolling_mean(adjusted))

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 6
    ##    symbol date        open close adjusted mean_5
    ##    <chr>  <date>     <dbl> <dbl>    <dbl>  <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02  27.4  28       28     NA
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03  27.9  27.8     27.8   NA
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04  28.0  28.8     28.8   NA
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07  28.7  29.4     29.4   NA
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08  29.5  29.1     29.1   28.6
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09  29.7  30.6     30.6   29.1
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10  30.6  31.3     31.3   29.8
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11  31.3  31.7     31.7   30.4
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14  32.1  31.0     31.0   30.7
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15  30.6  30.1     30.1   30.9
    ## # … with 998 more rows

You can create multiple versions of the rolling function if you need to calculate the mean at multiple window lengths.

    rolling_mean_2 <- rollify(mean, window = 2)
    rolling_mean_3 <- rollify(mean, window = 3)
    rolling_mean_4 <- rollify(mean, window = 4)

    FB %>% mutate(
      rm10 = rolling_mean_2(adjusted),
      rm20 = rolling_mean_3(adjusted),
      rm30 = rolling_mean_4(adjusted)
    )

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 8
    ##    symbol date        open close adjusted  rm10  rm20  rm30
    ##    <chr>  <date>     <dbl> <dbl>    <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02  27.4  28       28    NA    NA    NA
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03  27.9  27.8     27.8  27.9  NA    NA
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04  28.0  28.8     28.8  28.3  28.2  NA
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07  28.7  29.4     29.4  29.1  28.6  28.5
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08  29.5  29.1     29.1  29.2  29.1  28.8
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09  29.7  30.6     30.6  29.8  29.7  29.5
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10  30.6  31.3     31.3  30.9  30.3  30.1
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11  31.3  31.7     31.7  31.5  31.2  30.7
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14  32.1  31.0     31.0  31.3  31.3  31.1
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15  30.6  30.1     30.1  30.5  30.9  31.0
    ## # … with 998 more rows

## Purrr functional syntax

`rollify()` is built using pieces from the `purrr` package. One of those is the ability to accept an anonymous function using the `~` function syntax.

The documentation, `?rollify`, gives a thorough walkthrough of the different forms you can pass to `rollify()`, but let’s see a few more examples.

    # Rolling mean, but with function syntax
    rolling_mean <- rollify(.f = ~mean(.x), window = 5)

    mutate(FB, mean_5 = rolling_mean(adjusted))

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 6
    ##    symbol date        open close adjusted mean_5
    ##    <chr>  <date>     <dbl> <dbl>    <dbl>  <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02  27.4  28       28     NA
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03  27.9  27.8     27.8   NA
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04  28.0  28.8     28.8   NA
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07  28.7  29.4     29.4   NA
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08  29.5  29.1     29.1   28.6
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09  29.7  30.6     30.6   29.1
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10  30.6  31.3     31.3   29.8
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11  31.3  31.7     31.7   30.4
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14  32.1  31.0     31.0   30.7
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15  30.6  30.1     30.1   30.9
    ## # … with 998 more rows

You can create anonymous functions (functions without a name) on the fly.

    # 5 period average of 2 columns (open and close)
    rolling_avg_sum <- rollify(~ mean(.x + .y), window = 5)

    mutate(FB, avg_sum = rolling_avg_sum(open, close))

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 6
    ##    symbol date        open close adjusted avg_sum
    ##    <chr>  <date>     <dbl> <dbl>    <dbl>   <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02  27.4  28       28      NA
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03  27.9  27.8     27.8    NA
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04  28.0  28.8     28.8    NA
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07  28.7  29.4     29.4    NA
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08  29.5  29.1     29.1    56.9
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09  29.7  30.6     30.6    57.9
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10  30.6  31.3     31.3    59.1
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11  31.3  31.7     31.7    60.4
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14  32.1  31.0     31.0    61.4
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15  30.6  30.1     30.1    61.8
    ## # … with 998 more rows

## Optional arguments

To pass optional arguments (not `.x` or `.y`) to your rolling function, they must be specified in the non-rolling form in the call to `rollify()`.

For instance, say our dataset had `NA` values, but we still wanted to calculate an average. We need to specify `na.rm = TRUE` as an argument to `mean()`.

    FB$adjusted[1] <- NA

    # Do this
    rolling_mean_na <- rollify(~mean(.x, na.rm = TRUE), window = 5)

    FB %>% mutate(mean_na = rolling_mean_na(adjusted))

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 6
    ##    symbol date        open close adjusted mean_na
    ##    <chr>  <date>     <dbl> <dbl>    <dbl>   <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02  27.4  28       NA      NA
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03  27.9  27.8     27.8    NA
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04  28.0  28.8     28.8    NA
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07  28.7  29.4     29.4    NA
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08  29.5  29.1     29.1    28.8
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09  29.7  30.6     30.6    29.1
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10  30.6  31.3     31.3    29.8
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11  31.3  31.7     31.7    30.4
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14  32.1  31.0     31.0    30.7
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15  30.6  30.1     30.1    30.9
    ## # … with 998 more rows

    # Don't try this!
    # rolling_mean_na <- rollify(~mean(.x), window = 5)
    # FB %>% mutate(mean_na = rolling_mean_na(adjusted, na.rm = TRUE))

    # Reset FB
    data(FB)
    FB <- select(FB, symbol, date, adjusted)

## Returning more than 1 value per call

Say our rolling function returned a call to a custom `summary_df()` function. This function calculates a 5 number number summary and returns it as a tidy data frame.

We won’t be able to use the rolling version of this out of the box. `dplyr::mutate()` will complain that an incorrect number of values were returned since `rollify()` attempts to unlist at each call. Essentially, each call would be returning 5 values instead of 1. What we need is to be able to create a list-column. To do this, specify `unlist = FALSE` in the call to `rollify()`.

    # Our data frame summary
    summary_df <- function(x) {
      data.frame(
        rolled_summary_type = c("mean", "sd",  "min",  "max",  "median"),
        rolled_summary_val  = c(mean(x), sd(x), min(x), max(x), median(x))
      )
    }

    # A rolling version, with unlist = FALSE
    rolling_summary <- rollify(~summary_df(.x), window = 5,
                               unlist = FALSE)

    FB_summarised <- mutate(FB, summary_list_col = rolling_summary(adjusted))
    FB_summarised

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 4
    ##    symbol date       adjusted summary_list_col
    ##    <chr>  <date>        <dbl> <list>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02     28   <lgl [1]>
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03     27.8 <lgl [1]>
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04     28.8 <lgl [1]>
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07     29.4 <lgl [1]>
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10     31.3 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11     31.7 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14     31.0 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15     30.1 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ## # … with 998 more rows

The neat thing is that after removing the `NA` values at the beginning, the list-column can be unnested using `tidyr::unnest()` giving us a nice tidy 5-period rolling summary.

    FB_summarised %>%
      filter(!is.na(summary_list_col)) %>%
      unnest()

    ## Warning: `cols` is now required when using unnest().
    ## Please use `cols = c(summary_list_col)`

    ## # A tibble: 5,020 x 5
    ##    symbol date       adjusted rolled_summary_type rolled_summary_val
    ##    <chr>  <date>        <dbl> <chr>                            <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 mean                            28.6
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 sd                               0.700
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 min                             27.8
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 max                             29.4
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 median                          28.8
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 mean                            29.1
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 sd                               1.03
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 min                             27.8
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 max                             30.6
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 median                          29.1
    ## # … with 5,010 more rows

## Custom missing values

The last example was a little clunky because to unnest we had to remove the first few missing rows manually. If those missing values were empty data frames then `unnest()` would have known how to handle them. Luckily, the `na_value` argument will allow us to specify a value to fill the `NA` spots at the beginning of the roll.

    rolling_summary <- rollify(~summary_df(.x), window = 5,
                               unlist = FALSE, na_value = data.frame())

    FB_summarised <- mutate(FB, summary_list_col = rolling_summary(adjusted))
    FB_summarised

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 4
    ##    symbol date       adjusted summary_list_col
    ##    <chr>  <date>        <dbl> <list>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02     28   <df[,0] [0 × 0]>
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03     27.8 <df[,0] [0 × 0]>
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04     28.8 <df[,0] [0 × 0]>
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07     29.4 <df[,0] [0 × 0]>
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10     31.3 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11     31.7 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14     31.0 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15     30.1 <df[,2] [5 × 2]>
    ## # … with 998 more rows

Now unnesting directly:

    FB_summarised %>%
      unnest()

    ## Warning: `cols` is now required when using unnest().
    ## Please use `cols = c(summary_list_col)`

    ## # A tibble: 5,020 x 5
    ##    symbol date       adjusted rolled_summary_type rolled_summary_val
    ##    <chr>  <date>        <dbl> <chr>                            <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 mean                            28.6
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 sd                               0.700
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 min                             27.8
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 max                             29.4
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 median                          28.8
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 mean                            29.1
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 sd                               1.03
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 min                             27.8
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 max                             30.6
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 median                          29.1
    ## # … with 5,010 more rows

Finally, if you want to actually keep those first few NA rows in the unnest, you can pass a data frame that is initialized with the same column names as the rest of the values.

    rolling_summary <- rollify(~summary_df(.x), window = 5,
                               unlist = FALSE,
                               na_value = data.frame(rolled_summary_type = NA,
                                                     rolled_summary_val  = NA))

    FB_summarised <- mutate(FB, summary_list_col = rolling_summary(adjusted))
    FB_summarised %>% unnest()

    ## Warning: `cols` is now required when using unnest().
    ## Please use `cols = c(summary_list_col)`

    ## # A tibble: 5,024 x 5
    ##    symbol date       adjusted rolled_summary_type rolled_summary_val
    ##    <chr>  <date>        <dbl> <chr>                            <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02     28   <NA>                            NA
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03     27.8 <NA>                            NA
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04     28.8 <NA>                            NA
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07     29.4 <NA>                            NA
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 mean                            28.6
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 sd                               0.700
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 min                             27.8
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 max                             29.4
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-08     29.1 median                          28.8
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-09     30.6 mean                            29.1
    ## # … with 5,014 more rows

## Rolling regressions

A final use of this flexible function is to calculate rolling regressions.

A very ficticious example is to perform a rolling regression on the `FB` dataset of the form `close ~ high + low + volume`. Notice that we have 4 columns to pass here. This is more complicated than a `.x` and `.y` example, but have no fear. The arguments can be specified in order as `..1`, `..2`, … for as far as is required, or you can pass a freshly created anonymous function. The latter is what we will do so we can preserve the names of the variables in the regression.

Again, since this returns a linear model object, we will specify `unlist = FALSE`. Unfortunately there is no easy default NA value to pass here.

    # Reset FB
    data(FB)

    rolling_lm <- rollify(.f = function(close, high, low, volume) {
                                  lm(close ~ high + low + volume)
                               },
                          window = 5,
                          unlist = FALSE)

    FB_reg <- mutate(FB, roll_lm = rolling_lm(close, high, low, volume))
    FB_reg

    ## # A tibble: 1,008 x 9
    ##    symbol date        open  high   low close    volume adjusted roll_lm
    ##    <chr>  <date>     <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>     <dbl>    <dbl> <list>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-02  27.4  28.2  27.4  28    69846400     28   <lgl [1]>
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-03  27.9  28.5  27.6  27.8  63140600     27.8 <lgl [1]>
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-04  28.0  28.9  27.8  28.8  72715400     28.8 <lgl [1]>
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-07  28.7  29.8  28.6  29.4  83781800     29.4 <lgl [1]>
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-08  29.5  29.6  28.9  29.1  45871300     29.1 <lm>
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09  29.7  30.6  29.5  30.6 104787700     30.6 <lm>
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-10  30.6  31.5  30.3  31.3  95316400     31.3 <lm>
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-11  31.3  32.0  31.1  31.7  89598000     31.7 <lm>
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-14  32.1  32.2  30.6  31.0  98892800     31.0 <lm>
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-15  30.6  31.7  29.9  30.1 173242600     30.1 <lm>
    ## # … with 998 more rows

To get some useful information about the regressions, we will use `broom::tidy()` and apply it to each regression using a `mutate() + map()` combination.

    FB_reg %>%
      filter(!is.na(roll_lm)) %>%
      mutate(tidied = purrr::map(roll_lm, broom::tidy)) %>%
      unnest(tidied) %>%
      select(symbol, date, term, estimate, std.error, statistic, p.value)

    ## # A tibble: 4,016 x 7
    ##    symbol date       term         estimate     std.error statistic p.value
    ##    <chr>  <date>     <chr>           <dbl>         <dbl>     <dbl>   <dbl>
    ##  1 FB     2013-01-08 (Intercept) -2.84e- 1 10.2           -0.0279    0.982
    ##  2 FB     2013-01-08 high         7.09e- 1  1.95           0.364     0.778
    ##  3 FB     2013-01-08 low          2.70e- 1  2.16           0.125     0.921
    ##  4 FB     2013-01-08 volume       1.12e- 8  0.0000000266   0.422     0.746
    ##  5 FB     2013-01-09 (Intercept) -5.95e+ 0  7.48          -0.796     0.572
    ##  6 FB     2013-01-09 high         2.08e+ 0  1.88           1.10      0.468
    ##  7 FB     2013-01-09 low         -9.20e- 1  1.75          -0.526     0.692
    ##  8 FB     2013-01-09 volume      -1.45e-10  0.0000000168  -0.00861   0.995
    ##  9 FB     2013-01-10 (Intercept)  9.55e- 1  4.46           0.214     0.866
    ## 10 FB     2013-01-10 high         7.17e- 1  1.30           0.553     0.679
    ## # … with 4,006 more rows