In: Statistics and Probability
the department of energy website contains information about monthly wholesale and retail prices for natural gas in each state. go to www.eia.doe.gov/naturalgas/data.cfm and then click on the link monthly wholesale and retail prices. Under area, choose a state of interest to you, make sure the period Is monthly, and then under residential price click on view history. A window will open with a time plot covering approximately a 25-year period, along with a table of the monthly residential prices for each year.
(a) If you have access to statistical software, you should use the downland data (xls file) link to save the data as an excel (.xsl) file on your computer. Then enter the data into your software package and reproduce the time-series plot using the graphic capabilities of your software package. Be sure you use an appropriate title and axis labels. If you do not have access to the appropriate software, provide a rough sketch of the time plot that is given on the website.
(b) Is there a regular pattern of seasonal variation that repeats each year? Describe it. Are the prices increasing over time?
Answer(a): Plot of time series is plotted above. The state of California was selected for analysis.
month | price.seasonality.index |
January | 99.97584 |
February | 98.91215 |
March | 96.11076 |
April | 95.40866 |
May | 100.8078 |
June | 104.0972 |
July | 104.8449 |
August | 103.7426 |
September | 101.9066 |
October | 101.9417 |
November | 95.14643 |
December | 97.10529 |
Answer(b): Seasonality: from the seasonal index we can see that there is no any strong evidence of seasonality but there are slightly higher prices in the moth of June, July and August.
Trend: from the trend graph given below it can be seen that there is increasing trend in the price over the time.