msarima: Fit a Multi-Seasonal ARIMA Model

In msarima: Multi-Seasonal ARIMA Models

Fit a Multi-Seasonal ARIMA Model

Description

Fits an ARIMA model with one or more seasonal components to a univariate time series. This function extends the standard ARIMA framework to time series with several seasonal patterns, such as daily and weekly seasonality in hourly data, or weekly and yearly seasonality in daily data.

Usage

msarima(
  y,
  order = c(0, 0, 0),
  seasonal = list(),
  seasonal.period = NULL,
  fixed = NULL,
  include.constant = FALSE,
  optim_control = list(maxit = 200)
)

Arguments

y	A numeric vector or time series object (ts or msts) containing the data to be modelled. If y is a ts object and seasonal.period is not supplied, its frequency is used as the first seasonal period; if y is an msts object, its seasonal periods are used. Missing values are not allowed.
order	A numeric vector of length 3 specifying the non-seasonal part of the ARIMA model: the AR order (p), the degree of differencing (d), and the MA order (q). Default is c(0, 0, 0).
seasonal	A list of numeric vectors, each of length 3, specifying the seasonal components. Each vector gives the seasonal AR order (P), the seasonal differencing order (D), and the seasonal MA order (Q) of one component. For example, list(c(1, 0, 1), c(0, 1, 1)) specifies two seasonal components. Use list() for a model without seasonal components. Default is list().
seasonal.period	A numeric vector of seasonal periods, one for each element of seasonal, for example c(7, 30) for weekly and monthly seasonality. If NULL, the periods are taken from y when it is a ts or msts object. Periods can be given in any order but must be distinct. Default is NULL.
fixed	A numeric vector with one entry per parameter, used to hold some of them at a given value: only the NA entries are estimated. The parameters are ordered as non-seasonal AR, seasonal AR (one block per seasonal component), non-seasonal MA, seasonal MA (one block per seasonal component), sigma, and the constant term when include.constant = TRUE. Default is NULL, meaning that all parameters are estimated.
include.constant	Should the model include a constant term? The constant is the intercept of the model equation, not the mean of the series: for a stationary model the two are related by \mu = c / \phi(1), where c is the intercept and \phi(1) is the full AR polynomial (seasonal components included) evaluated at 1. For example, for an AR(1) model \mu = c / (1 - \phi_1). A constant cannot be combined with differencing and is dropped, with a warning, when d or any D is non-zero. Default is FALSE.
optim_control	A list of control parameters passed to optim. Default is list(maxit = 200).

Details

The model is estimated by conditional maximum likelihood: the residuals are computed recursively and the resulting Gaussian log-likelihood is maximised numerically with optim, using the BFGS algorithm.

When d or any D is non-zero, the series is differenced before estimation and the ARMA part is estimated on the differenced data. The first d + sum(D * S) observations are therefore not used, which is why the residuals and the fitted values start with as many NA values: these observations have no differenced value to predict, so no residual is defined for them under the conditional likelihood.

Standard errors are computed from the inverse of the observed information matrix (negative Hessian). If the Hessian is singular, a warning is issued and the standard errors are set to NA.

Value

An object of class "msarima", which is a list containing:

order	The non-seasonal ARIMA order (p, d, q).
seasonal	List of seasonal orders (P, D, Q), one vector per seasonal component.
seasonal.period	Vector of seasonal periods.
coef	Named vector of estimated coefficients: the AR, SAR, MA and SMA parameters, followed by the intercept if include.constant = TRUE.
var_coef	Variance-covariance matrix of the coefficient estimates, with the same dimension and order as coef. Rows and columns of fixed parameters are NA.
mask	Logical vector with the same length and order as coef, TRUE for fixed parameters.
loglik	Log-likelihood of the fitted model.
aic	Akaike Information Criterion.
bic	Bayesian Information Criterion.
aicc	Corrected Akaike Information Criterion.
sigma2	Estimated innovation variance.
x	The original time series.
fitted	One-step-ahead fitted values, on the scale of the original series.
residuals	Model residuals. Together with fitted, the first d + sum(D * S) values are NA, since differencing leaves no observations to predict for them.
method	Character string describing the fitted model, e.g. "mSARIMA(1,0,0)(1,0,0)[4]".
series	Name of the series.
nobs	Number of observations in the original series.
n.used	Number of observations used in estimation (after differencing).
call	The matched call.
convergence	Convergence code from optim (0 indicates successful convergence).

Note

• The series must have at least 10 observations, both before and after differencing.

• Seasonal periods must be at least 2 and at most half the length of the series.

• If y is a ts or msts object, x, fitted and residuals keep the same time series structure. If y is a plain numeric vector, they are returned as ts with one seasonal period, or as msts with several.

Examples

# Example 1: ARIMA with two seasonal components
set.seed(123)
y <- msarima.sim(nsim = 200,
                 order = c(1, 0, 0),
                 seasonal = list(c(1, 0, 0), c(0, 0, 1)),
                 seasonal.period = c(4, 11),
                 ar = c(0.5, 0.5), ma = 0.3, sigma2 = 1)

fit <- msarima(y, order = c(1, 0, 0),
               seasonal = list(c(1, 0, 0), c(0, 0, 1)),
               seasonal.period = c(4, 11))
print(fit)
summary(fit)

# Example 2: msts input, seasonal periods detected automatically
y_msts <- msts(y, seasonal.periods = c(4, 11))
fit_msts <- msarima(y_msts, order = c(1, 0, 0),
                    seasonal = list(c(1, 0, 0), c(0, 0, 1)))

# Example 3: differencing
fit_diff <- msarima(cumsum(y), order = c(1, 1, 0),
                    seasonal = list(c(0, 0, 1)),
                    seasonal.period = 4)
head(residuals(fit_diff))  # the first residual is NA

# Example 4: fixing parameters
# Note: the length of 'fixed' must match AR + SAR + MA + SMA + sigma
fit_fixed <- msarima(y, order = c(1, 0, 0),
                     seasonal = list(c(1, 0, 0), c(0, 0, 1)),
                     seasonal.period = c(4, 11),
                     fixed = c(0.5, NA, NA, NA))
AIC(fit); AIC(fit_fixed)

msarima documentation built on Nov. 12, 2026, 5:11 p.m.