It's just the way I Roll...

This is data from Quebec on the number of children born every day. As you can see it's quite messy. There's alot of data in that plot, over 5000 day's figures.

By applying a 30 day rolling average a clear seasonal pattern emerges.

A 365 day rolling average produces a much more clear long term trend than either the daily or 30 day rolling figures.

 

Data: Number of daily births in Quebec, Jan. 01, 1977 to Dec. 31, 1990 from here.



ChRistmas with extRa R - XML & xtable

I like the R blog is.R(). They're doing an Advent CalendaR this Christmas looking at an R package everyday up until Christmas Eve. I thought I'd play along. Instead of doing exactly the same as them and using the US presidential election results I'll do a variation on a theme and scrape the last UK general election results data from Wikipedia.

> require(XML)
> myURL <-"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010"
> allTables <-readHTMLTable(myURL)
> str(allTables)
#List of 29..... I just want the 11th
> stateTable <- allTables[[11]]
> head(stateTable)
#used the data editor in RGui to tidy it up a little
> fix(stateTable)
#Need to remove the first column as I'm not bothered about the #colours and adjust some on the column names
> stateTable <- stateTable[,-1]
> names(stateTable)
> colnames(stateTable)[7] <- 'Net Change in Seats'
> colnames(stateTable)[10] <- 'Change in % of Votes'
> require(xtable)
> resultsTable<-xtable(stateTable)
> print(resultsTable, type="html"))

	Political Party	Candidates	Number of Votes	Elected	Seats Gained	Seats Lost	Net Change in Seats	% of Seats	% of Votes	Change in % of Votes
1	Conservative	631	10,703,654	306	100	3	+97	47.1	36.1	+3.7
2	Labour	631	8,606,517	258	3	94	-91	39.7	29.0	-6.2
3	Liberal Democrat	631	6,836,248	57	8	13	-5	8.8	23.0	+1.0
4	UKIP	572	919,471	0	0	0	0	0	3.1	+0.9
5	BNP	338	564,321	0	0	0	0	0	1.9	+1.2
6	SNP	59	491,386	6	0	0	0	0.9	1.7	+0.1
7	Green	310	265,243	1	1	0	+1	0.2	0.9	-0.2
8	Sinn Féin	17	171,942	5	0	0	0	0.8	0.6	-0.1
9	Democratic Unionist	16	168,216	8	0	1	-1	1.2	0.6	-0.3
10	Plaid Cymru	40	165,394	3	1	0	+1	0.5	0.6	-0.1
11	SDLP	18	110,970	3	0	0	0	0.5	0.4	-0.1
12	Conservatives and Unionists	17	102,361	0	0	1	-1	0	0.3	-0.1
13	English Democrats	107	64,826	0	0	0	0	0	0.2	0.2
14	Alliance	18	42,762	1	1	0	+1	0.2	0.1	0.0
15	Respect	11	33,251	0	0	1	-1	0	0.1	-0.1
16	Traditional Unionist Voice	10	26,300	0	0	0	0	0	0.1	N/A
17	Speaker	1	22,860	1	0	0	0	0.2	0.1	0.0
18	Independent - Rodney Connor	1	21,300	0	0	0	0	0	0.1	N/A
19	Independent - Sylvia Hermon	1	21,181	1	1	0	+1	0.2	0.1	N/A
20	Christian	71	18,623	0	0	0	0	0	0.1	+0.1
21	Green	20	16,827	0	0	0	0	0	0.1	0.0
22	Health Concern	1	16,150	0	0	1	-1	0	0.1	0.0
23	Trade Unionist &amp Socialist	42	12,275	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
24	Independent - Bob Spink	1	12,174	0	0	1	-1	0	0.0	N/A
25	National Front	17	10,784	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
26	Buckinghamshire Campaign for Democracy	1	10,331	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
27	Monster Raving Loony	27	7,510	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
28	Socialist Labour	23	7,219	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	-0.1
29	Liberal	5	6,781	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	-0.1
30	Blaenau Gwent People's Voice	1	6,458	0	0	1	-1	0	0.0	-0.1
31	Christian Peoples	17	6,276	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
32	Mebyon Kernow	6	5,379	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
33	Lincolnshire Independents	3	5,311	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
34	Mansfield Independent Forum	1	4,339	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
35	Green (NI)	4	3,542	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
36	Socialist Alternative	3	3,298	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
37	Trust	2	3,233	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
38	Scottish Socialist	10	3,157	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	-0.1
39	People Before Profit	1	2,936	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
40	Local Liberals People Before Politics	1	1,964	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
41	Independent - Esther Rantzen	1	1,872	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
42	Alliance for Green Socialism	6	1,581	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
43	Social Democrat	2	1,551	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
44	Pirate	9	1,340	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
45	Communist	6	947	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
46	Democratic Labour	1	842	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
47	Democratic Nationalist Party	2	753	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	N/A
48	Workers Revolutionary	7	738	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
49	Peace	3	737	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
50	New Millennium Bean Party	1	558	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0.0
51	-	29,687,604	650	-	-	-	Turnout	65.1	-