# Time Series Analysis¶

Often, one wants to analyze a continuous set of outputs from a simulation in a uniform manner. A simple example would be to calculate the peak density in a set of outputs that were written out. The problem with time series analysis in yt is general an issue of verbosity and clunkiness. Typically, one sets up a loop:

for dsi in range(30):
fn = "DD%04i/DD%04i" % (dsi, dsi)
process_output(ds)


But this is not really very nice. This ends up requiring a lot of maintenance. The DatasetSeries object has been designed to remove some of this clunkiness and present an easier, more unified approach to analyzing sets of data. Even better, DatasetSeries works in parallel by default (see Parallel Computation With yt), so you can use a DatasetSeries object to quickly and easily parallelize your analysis. Since doing the same analysis task on many simulation outputs is ‘embarrassingly’ parallel, this naturally allows for almost arbitrary speedup - limited only by the number of available processors and the number of simulation outputs.

The idea behind the current implementation of time series analysis is that the underlying data and the operators that act on that data can and should be distinct. There are several operators provided, as well as facilities for creating your own, and these operators can be applied either to datasets on the whole or to subregions of individual datasets.

The simplest mechanism for creating a DatasetSeries object is to pass a glob pattern to the yt.load function.

import yt


This will create a new time series, populated with all datasets that match the pattern “DD” followed by four digits. This object, here called ts, can now be analyzed in bulk. Alternately, you can specify an already formatted list of filenames directly to the DatasetSeries initializer:

import yt
ts = yt.DatasetSeries(["DD0030/DD0030", "DD0040/DD0040"])


## Analyzing Each Dataset In Sequence¶

The DatasetSeries object has two primary methods of iteration. The first is a very simple iteration, where each object is returned for iteration:

import yt
for ds in ts:
print(ds.current_time)


This can also operate in parallel, using piter(). For more examples, see:

## Analyzing an Entire Simulation¶

Note

Implemented for the Enzo, Gadget, OWLS, and Exodus II frontends.

The parameter file used to run a simulation contains all the information necessary to know what datasets should be available. The simulation convenience function allows one to create a DatasetSeries object of all or a subset of all data created by a single simulation.

To instantiate, give the parameter file and the simulation type.

import yt
my_sim = yt.simulation('enzo_tiny_cosmology/32Mpc_32.enzo', 'Enzo')


Then, create a DatasetSeries object with the frontends.enzo.simulation_handling.EnzoSimulation.get_time_series() function. With no additional keywords, the time series will include every dataset. If the find_outputs keyword is set to True, a search of the simulation directory will be performed looking for potential datasets. These datasets will be temporarily loaded in order to figure out the time and redshift associated with them. This can be used when simulation data was created in a non-standard way, making it difficult to guess the corresponding time and redshift information

my_sim.get_time_series()


After this, time series analysis can be done normally.

for ds in my_sim.piter()
all_data = ds.all_data()
print(all_data.quantities.extrema('density'))


Additional keywords can be given to frontends.enzo.simulation_handling.EnzoSimulation.get_time_series() to select a subset of the total data:

• time_data (bool): Whether or not to include time outputs when gathering datasets for time series. Default: True. (Enzo only)
• redshift_data (bool): Whether or not to include redshift outputs when gathering datasets for time series. Default: True. (Enzo only)
• initial_time (float): The earliest time for outputs to be included. If None, the initial time of the simulation is used. This can be used in combination with either final_time or final_redshift. Default: None.
• final_time (float): The latest time for outputs to be included. If None, the final time of the simulation is used. This can be used in combination with either initial_time or initial_redshift. Default: None.
• times (list): A list of times for which outputs will be found. Default: None.
• initial_redshift (float): The earliest redshift for outputs to be included. If None, the initial redshift of the simulation is used. This can be used in combination with either final_time or final_redshift. Default: None.
• final_redshift (float): The latest redshift for outputs to be included. If None, the final redshift of the simulation is used. This can be used in combination with either initial_time or initial_redshift. Default: None.
• redshifts (list): A list of redshifts for which outputs will be found. Default: None.
• initial_cycle (float): The earliest cycle for outputs to be included. If None, the initial cycle of the simulation is used. This can only be used with final_cycle. Default: None. (Enzo only)
• final_cycle (float): The latest cycle for outputs to be included. If None, the final cycle of the simulation is used. This can only be used in combination with initial_cycle. Default: None. (Enzo only)
• tolerance (float): Used in combination with times or redshifts keywords, this is the tolerance within which outputs are accepted given the requested times or redshifts. If None, the nearest output is always taken. Default: None.
• parallel (bool/int): If True, the generated DatasetSeries will divide the work such that a single processor works on each dataset. If an integer is supplied, the work will be divided into that number of jobs. Default: True.