NumPy version of "Exponential weighted moving average", equivalent to pandas.ewm().mean()

Question

How do I get the exponential weighted moving average in NumPy just like the following in pandas?

import pandas as pd
import pandas_datareader as pdr
from datetime import datetime

# Declare variables
ibm = pdr.get_data_yahoo(symbols='IBM', start=datetime(2000, 1, 1), end=datetime(2012, 1, 1)).reset_index(drop=True)['Adj Close']
windowSize = 20

# Get PANDAS exponential weighted moving average
ewm_pd = pd.DataFrame(ibm).ewm(span=windowSize, min_periods=windowSize).mean().as_matrix()

print(ewm_pd)

I tried the following with NumPy

import numpy as np
import pandas_datareader as pdr
from datetime import datetime

# From this post: http://stackoverflow.com/a/40085052/3293881 by @Divakar
def strided_app(a, L, S): # Window len = L, Stride len/stepsize = S
    nrows = ((a.size - L) // S) + 1
    n = a.strides[0]
    return np.lib.stride_tricks.as_strided(a, shape=(nrows, L), strides=(S * n, n))

def numpyEWMA(price, windowSize):
    weights = np.exp(np.linspace(-1., 0., windowSize))
    weights /= weights.sum()

    a2D = strided_app(price, windowSize, 1)

    returnArray = np.empty((price.shape[0]))
    returnArray.fill(np.nan)
    for index in (range(a2D.shape[0])):
        returnArray[index + windowSize-1] = np.convolve(weights, a2D[index])[windowSize - 1:-windowSize + 1]
    return np.reshape(returnArray, (-1, 1))

# Declare variables
ibm = pdr.get_data_yahoo(symbols='IBM', start=datetime(2000, 1, 1), end=datetime(2012, 1, 1)).reset_index(drop=True)['Adj Close']
windowSize = 20

# Get NumPy exponential weighted moving average
ewma_np = numpyEWMA(ibm, windowSize)

print(ewma_np)

But the results are not similar as the ones in pandas.

Is there maybe a better approach to calculate the exponential weighted moving average directly in NumPy and get the exact same result as the pandas.ewm().mean()?

At 60,000 requests on pandas solution, I get about 230 seconds. I am sure that with a pure NumPy, this can be decreased significantly.

Answer 1

I think I have finally cracked it!

Here's a vectorized version of numpy_ewma function that's claimed to be producing the correct results from @RaduS's post -

def numpy_ewma_vectorized(data, window):

    alpha = 2 /(window + 1.0)
    alpha_rev = 1-alpha

    scale = 1/alpha_rev
    n = data.shape[0]

    r = np.arange(n)
    scale_arr = scale**r
    offset = data[0]*alpha_rev**(r+1)
    pw0 = alpha*alpha_rev**(n-1)

    mult = data*pw0*scale_arr
    cumsums = mult.cumsum()
    out = offset + cumsums*scale_arr[::-1]
    return out

Further boost

We can boost it further with some code re-use, like so -

def numpy_ewma_vectorized_v2(data, window):

    alpha = 2 /(window + 1.0)
    alpha_rev = 1-alpha
    n = data.shape[0]

    pows = alpha_rev**(np.arange(n+1))

    scale_arr = 1/pows[:-1]
    offset = data[0]*pows[1:]
    pw0 = alpha*alpha_rev**(n-1)

    mult = data*pw0*scale_arr
    cumsums = mult.cumsum()
    out = offset + cumsums*scale_arr[::-1]
    return out

Runtime test

Let's time these two against the same loopy function for a big dataset.

In [97]: data = np.random.randint(2,9,(5000))
    ...: window = 20
    ...:

In [98]: np.allclose(numpy_ewma(data, window), numpy_ewma_vectorized(data, window))
Out[98]: True

In [99]: np.allclose(numpy_ewma(data, window), numpy_ewma_vectorized_v2(data, window))
Out[99]: True

In [100]: %timeit numpy_ewma(data, window)
100 loops, best of 3: 6.03 ms per loop

In [101]: %timeit numpy_ewma_vectorized(data, window)
1000 loops, best of 3: 665 µs per loop

In [102]: %timeit numpy_ewma_vectorized_v2(data, window)
1000 loops, best of 3: 357 µs per loop

In [103]: 6030/357.0
Out[103]: 16.89075630252101

There is around a 17 times speedup!