NbbTools > Documentation Applications

Outliers Seeker MANUAL  

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Data import
  • Importing data from Excel
  • Importing series in the text format
• Menus reference
  • Main menu
  • Contextual menus

1. Introduction

The "Outliers Seeker" (OutlierSeeker.exe) is a .NET application that seeks outliers in a whole collection of time series, using TRAMO (.NET implementation). The data can be easily imported from many applications, like Excel.

The outliers are displayed in different colors in the left panel of the window.

In the right panels you have different information on the selected series (chosen model, residuals) and a graph with the position of the outliers marked with little circles.

You can set as you want the size of all these different panes and a menu let you choose different settings for the search of the outliers (sensibility, outliers type, model choice, calendar effect, log transformation).

 A reminder of the settings used is displayed at the bottom of the window.

You can save all these results (with all the colors attributes) copying them back to an Excel sheet or separately print the content of each panel.

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2. Data import

Time series can be imported in the application by means of a drag and drop or a copy/paste operation. The drop zone is the left panel (TsTable component), while the paste operation can be executed from the local or main menu.

Every time you drop or paste new series, the previous ones are erased and the outliers detection is automatically processed, using the current specifications.

Different formats are supported. The most important ones are the Excel format (Excel 2003 or higher) and the Text format.

Importing data from Excel

- The series in Excel can be vertically or horizontally oriented  but the first column to the left of the observations or the first row up to the observations depending of the orientation must be real Excel dates. This point also applies to yearly series.

- You must always select the dates together with minimum one column or one row of observations.

Examples of good selections :

If you want all the table observations and if there are titles joined to the series, you can select them together with the observations. These names will be displayed as titles in the application (a series without name remains without name in the application).

You can select only a part of a table without the titles. The application will automatically give names for each series (Series 1, Series 2 ....).

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Importing series in the text format

-The data must be structured very similar to the vertical orientation used for Excel.

-The text must be TAB delimited for the different columns.

-The dates must be in the "Short date" format as defined in your "Regional Options" (Start - Settings - control Panel - Regional and Language Options).  

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3. Menus Reference

In addition to the main menu, each one of the three panes disposes of a contextual menu (right mouse button) specific to his functions.

A) - Main menu

Edit

- Copy (Data + Colors) : load the clipboard with a copy of the results in the left grey panel (colors format included).

- Copy TsCollection (Data only) : copies all the series in the left grey panel in the clipboard (without formats).

- Paste : drops the content of the clipboard in the left grey panel. If the data are not a good table format, nothing is displayed.

Options

Settings

The command Settings opens a dialog box to fix the different parameters of the analysis.

The picture below shows the default settings.

Each time you make a change and close the dialog box with the Ok button, the results are recalculated (that happens also after opening and closing this dialog box without any changes) .

- Settings button of the Sensibility frame :

The values presented in the sensibility dialog box correspond to the VA parameter of the original TRAMO program.

For each sensibility you can slightly modify the values in the limits displayed.

The Reset Defaults button resets the value that you see actually above.

Display SA

Toggles the display of the seasonal adjusted selected series in the graph panel (below right). For yearly data this menu is shaded and not active.

Zoom

Four fixed zoom ratio are displayed and the current ratio is checked. It is possible that none is checked if the ratio has been fixed with the contextual menu commands Zoom In / Zoom Out of the left grey panel.

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B) - Contextual Menus

The pictures below indicate the available contextual menus. A full description of those menus - that are not specific to the Outliers Seeker application - can be found in the description of the main graphical and table components.

Documentation for the different components.

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