Questions tagged [stationarity]

A strictly stationary process (or time series) is one whose joint distribution is constant over time shifts. A weakly stationary (or covariance stationary) process or series is one whose mean and covariance function (variance and autocorrelation function) do not change over time.

A strictly stationary process (or time series) is one whose joint distribution is constant over time. That is, the joint distribution of any set of $k+1$ observations $\{x_t, ..., x_{t+k}\}$ does not depend on $t$. So the process "looks the same" probabilistically wherever you are in time.

A weakly stationary process or series is one whose mean, $E(x_t)$, and covariance function, $\text{Cov}(x_t, x_{t+k})$ (variance and autocorrelation function), are constant over time.

Strict stationarity does not imply weak stationarity (because mean, variance and/or autocorrelation of a strictly stationary process need not exist). Weak stationarity does not imply strict stationarity (because higher order moments of a weakly stationary process might be nonconstant over time).

Stationarity is an important concept in time series analysis. Time series data are often transformed to become stationary.

References:
Wikipedia - Stationary process
Investopedia - Stationary and nonstationary processes

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Why does a time series have to be stationary?

I understand that a stationary time series is one whose mean and variance is constant over time. Can someone please explain why we have to make sure our data set is stationary before we can run different ARIMA or ARM models on it? Does this also…
alex
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How to make a time series stationary?

Besides taking differences, what are other techniques for making a non-stationary time series, stationary? Ordinarily one refers to a series as "integrated of order p" if it can be made stationary through a lag operator $(1-L)^P X_t$.
Shane
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What is the difference between a stationary test and a unit root test?

What is the difference between the Kwiatkowski–Phillips–Schmidt–Shin (KPSS) test and the augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test? Are they testing the same thing? Or do we need to use them in different situations?
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How to know if a time series is stationary or non-stationary?

I am using R, I searched on Google and learnt that kpss.test(), PP.test(), and adf.test() are used to know about stationarity of time series. But I am not a statistician, who can interpret their results > PP.test(x) Phillips-Perron Unit Root…
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Why are random walks intercorrelated?

I have observed that, on average, the absolute value of Pearson correlation coefficient is a constant close to 0.560.42 for any pair of independent random walks, regardless of the walk length. Can someone explain this phenomenon? I expected the…
Adam
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Does correlation assume stationarity of data?

Inter-market analysis is a method of modeling market behavior by means of finding relationships between different markets. Often times, a correlation is computed between two markets, say S&P 500 and 30-Year US treasuries. These computations are more…
Milktrader
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Consequences of modeling a non-stationary process using ARMA?

I understand we should use ARIMA for modelling a non-stationary time series. Also, everything I read says ARMA should only be used for stationary time series. What I'm trying to understand is, what happens in practice when misclassifying a model,…
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A proof for the stationarity of an AR(2)

Consider a mean-centred AR(2) process $$X_t=\phi_1X_{t-1}+\phi_2X_{t-2}+\epsilon_t$$ where $\epsilon_t$ is the standard white noise process. Just for sake of simplicity let me call $\phi_1=b$ and $\phi_{2}=a$. Focusing on the roots of the…
Marco
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Can someone explain the importance of mean stationarity in time series?

In regular regression, the expected value of Y | X is allowed to change. In fact we generally use regression when we want to model this change in conditional mean. I am not understanding why in time series, we want our series to be mean stationary.…
confused
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Which Dickey-Fuller test for a time series modelled with an intercept/drift and a linear trend?

Short version: I have a time series of climate data that I'm testing for stationarity. Based on previous research, I expect the model underlying (or "generating", so to speak) the data to have an intercept term and a positive linear time trend. To…
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Nice example where a series without a unit root is non stationary?

I've seen several times people reject the null in an augmented Dickey-Fuller test, and then claim that it shows their series is stationary (unfortunately, I cannot show the sources of these claims, but I imagine similar claims exist here and there…
Glen_b
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Whether a AR(P) process is stationary or not?

In practice, how to evaluate whether a AR(P) process is stationary or not? How to determine the order for the AR and MA model?
user3125
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Confusion with Augmented Dickey Fuller test

I am working on the data set electricity available in R package TSA. My aim is to find out if an arima model will be appropriate for this data and eventually fit it. So I proceeded as follows: 1st: Plot the time series which resulted if the…
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What are the stationarity requirements of using regression with ARIMA errors for inference?

What are the stationarity requirements of using regression with ARIMA errors (dynamic regression) for inference? Specifically, I have a non-stationary continuous outcome variable $y$, a non-stationary continuous predictor variable $x_a$ and a dummy…
fmark
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If an auto-regressive time series model is non-linear, does it still require stationarity?

Thinking about using recurrent neural networks for time series forecasting. They basically implement a sort of generalized non-linear auto-regression, compared to ARMA and ARIMA models which use linear auto-regression. If we are performing…
Skander H.
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