Thanks Gabor and other for their input. I admit that I must have placed some reproducible codes on what I wanted. However it was actually in my mind however I restrained because it was not any R related query rather a general Statistics related.
Here I am using dummy variables in ***Time series context***. Please assume following artificial TS along with the quarterly dummies: library(zoo) # my time series MyTimeSeries <- zooreg(101:126, start=as.yearqtr(as.Date("2005-01-01")), frequency=4) # creation of quarterly dummy ### dummy1 dummy1 <- zooreg(Reduce("rbind", rep(list(diag(4)), 7)), start=as.yearqtr(as.Date("2005-01-01")), frequency=4) dummy1 <- merge(dummy1, MyTimeSeries, all=F)[,1:4] colnames(dummy1) <- paste("dummy", 1:4, sep="") ### dummy2 dummy2 <- dummy1 - 1/4 ### dummy3 dummy3 <- dummy1 dummy3[dummy3 ==0] = -1/(4-1) # Time series with quarterly dummy TS_with_dummy1 <- cbind(MyTimeSeries, dummy1[,-4]) TS_with_dummy2 <- cbind(MyTimeSeries, dummy2[,-4]) TS_with_dummy3 <- cbind(MyTimeSeries, dummy3[,-4]) TS_with_dummy1 TS_with_dummy2 TS_with_dummy3 Here you see, as my previous post, there are 3 types of dummies: dummy1, dummy2, and dummy3 (quarterly dummies). I used to use dummy1 declaration for all my time series analysis. However later in the "vars" package I noticed the 2nd type of definition for dummy. And 3rd definition I have come across from somewhere in net (which I cant just recall at this time.) Here my question was: which is the centred dummy variable (according to help page of vars package 2nd one is the centred dummy)? However I am searching for the definition of centred dummy variables in time series analysis context. Therefore I would want to know, why 2nd one is called centred dummy? Why people prefer for it, not the Standard dummy definition (i.e. dummy1). Can you please explain? Thanks and regards, -----Original Message----- From: Gabor Grothendieck [mailto:ggrothendi...@gmail.com] Sent: 12 January 2011 05:47 To: Christofer Bogaso Cc: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] A question on dummy variable On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Christofer Bogaso <bogaso.christo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear all, I would like to ask one question related to statistics, for > specifically on defining dummy variables. As of now, I have come > across 3 different kind of dummy variables (assuming I am working with > Seasonal dummy, and number of season is 4): > >> dummy1 <- diag(4) >> for(i in 1:3) dummy1 <- rbind(dummy1, diag(4)) >> dummy1 <- dummy1[,-4] >> >> dummy2 <- dummy1 >> dummy2[dummy2 == 0] = -1/(4-1) >> >> dummy3 <- dummy1 - 1/4 >> >> head(dummy1) > [,1] [,2] [,3] > [1,] 1 0 0 > [2,] 0 1 0 > [3,] 0 0 1 > [4,] 0 0 0 > [5,] 1 0 0 > [6,] 0 1 0 >> head(dummy2) > [,1] [,2] [,3] > [1,] 1.0000000 -0.3333333 -0.3333333 > [2,] -0.3333333 1.0000000 -0.3333333 > [3,] -0.3333333 -0.3333333 1.0000000 > [4,] -0.3333333 -0.3333333 -0.3333333 > [5,] 1.0000000 -0.3333333 -0.3333333 > [6,] -0.3333333 1.0000000 -0.3333333 >> head(dummy3) > [,1] [,2] [,3] > [1,] 0.75 -0.25 -0.25 > [2,] -0.25 0.75 -0.25 > [3,] -0.25 -0.25 0.75 > [4,] -0.25 -0.25 -0.25 > [5,] 0.75 -0.25 -0.25 > [6,] -0.25 0.75 -0.25 > Now I want to know which type of dummy definition is called Centered > dummy and why it is called so? Is it equivalent to use any of the > above definitions (atleast 2nd and 3rd?) It would really be very > helpful if somebody point any suggestion and clarification. > The contrasts of your dummy1 matrix are contr.SAS contrasts in R. (The default contrasts in R are contr.treatment which are the same as contr.SAS except contr.SAS uses the last level as the base whereas treatment contrasts use the first level as the base.) options(contrasts = c("contr.SAS", "contr.poly")) f <- gl(4, 1, 16) M <- model.matrix( ~ f ) all( M[, -1] == dummy1) # TRUE Centered contrasts are ones which have been centered -- i.e. the mean of each column has been subtracted from that column. This is equivalent to saying that the column sums are zero. The means of the three columns of dummy1 are c(1/4, 1/4, 1/4) so if we subtract 1/4 from dummy1 we get a centered contrasts matrix. That is precisely what you did to get dummy3. We can check that dummy3 is centered: colSums(dummy3) # 0 0 0 dummy2 is just a scaled version of dummy3. In fact dummy2 equals dummy3 / .75 so its not fundamentally different. Its columns still sum to zero so its still centered. all( dummy2 == dummy3 / .75) # TRUE colSums(dummy2) # 0 0 0 except for floating point error -- Statistics & Software Consulting GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com ______________________________________________ R-help@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.