Home/ Questions/Q 555
Next
Answered
Kenil Vasani
Kenil Vasani

Kenil Vasani

View Profile
  • 9
Asked: 2020-12-14T21:04:51+00:00 In:

Why am I getting “LinAlgError: Singular matrix” from grangercausalitytests?

  • 9

I am trying to run grangercausalitytests on two time series:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

from statsmodels.tsa.stattools import grangercausalitytests

n = 1000
ls = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, n)

df1 = pd.DataFrame(np.sin(ls))
df2 = pd.DataFrame(2*np.sin(1+ls))

df = pd.concat([df1, df2], axis=1)

df.plot()

grangercausalitytests(df, maxlag=20)

However, I am getting

Granger Causality
number of lags (no zero) 1
ssr based F test:         F=272078066917221398041264652288.0000, p=0.0000  , df_denom=996, df_num=1
ssr based chi2 test:   chi2=272897579166972095424217743360.0000, p=0.0000  , df=1
likelihood ratio test: chi2=60811.2671, p=0.0000  , df=1
parameter F test:         F=272078066917220553616334520320.0000, p=0.0000  , df_denom=996, df_num=1

Granger Causality
number of lags (no zero) 2
ssr based F test:         F=7296.6976, p=0.0000  , df_denom=995, df_num=2
ssr based chi2 test:   chi2=14637.3954, p=0.0000  , df=2
likelihood ratio test: chi2=2746.0362, p=0.0000  , df=2
parameter F test:         F=13296850090491009488285469769728.0000, p=0.0000  , df_denom=995, df_num=2
...
/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/numpy/linalg/linalg.py in _raise_linalgerror_singular(err, flag)
     88 
     89 def _raise_linalgerror_singular(err, flag):
---> 90     raise LinAlgError("Singular matrix")
     91 
     92 def _raise_linalgerror_nonposdef(err, flag):

LinAlgError: Singular matrix

and I am not sure why this is the case.

pythonstatsmodels
Share

    1 Answer

    1. Kenil Vasani

      Kenil Vasani

      View Profile
      Best Answer

      The problem arises due to the perfect correlation between the two series in your data. From the traceback, you can see, that internally a wald test is used to compute the maximum likelihood estimates for the parameters of the lag-time series. To do this an estimate of the parameters covariance matrix (which is then near-zero) and its inverse is needed (as you can also see in the line invcov = np.linalg.inv(cov_p) in the traceback). This near-zero matrix is now singular for some maximum lag number (>=5) and thus the test crashes. If you add just a little noise to your data, the error disappears:

      import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from statsmodels.tsa.stattools import grangercausalitytests

n = 1000
ls = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, n)
df1Clean = pd.DataFrame(np.sin(ls))
df2Clean = pd.DataFrame(2*np.sin(ls+1))
dfClean = pd.concat([df1Clean, df2Clean], axis=1)
dfDirty = dfClean+0.00001*np.random.rand(n, 2)

grangercausalitytests(dfClean, maxlag=20, verbose=False)    # Raises LinAlgError
grangercausalitytests(dfDirty, maxlag=20, verbose=False)    # Runs fine
      • 3

    You must login to add an answer.