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VedicDateTime (Part A)

Ritwick Pal edited this page Apr 17, 2022 · 4 revisions

Background

Worldwide, calendars are classified into three categories, solar, lunar, and lunisolar, based on motions of Sun, Moon, and both, respectively. Being lunisolar, the Vedic calendars are capable of considering both solar and lunar activities. Therefore, these calendars can have potentially an upper hand in over solar and lunar calendars. Several natural activities on the earth are due to the influences of the Sun and Moon, and the Vedic calendars are able to observe these patterns. Time series analysis plays a very crucial role in day-to-day applications and is one of the major components in the field of data science. The modern computations (including time series analysis) are performed with the Gregorian (solar) calendars. The potential of the Vedic calendar is discussed in the article from the time series analysis point of view along with some logical and experimental comments to motivate to dig further possibilities in the domain.  

Related work

In R, most of the time related computations are performed based on the Gregorian calendar system with the popular class discussed here. However, despite being potential and tremendous possibilities in time series analysis, other calendar systems are not exercised in the R and Data Science community.

Details of your coding project

This project aims to contribute to an R package, named 'VedicDateTime', which will be having several functionalities to facilitate conversion between Gregorian and Vedic calendar systems, and examine its impact in the time series analysis domain.

The goal of this coding project is to develop a new R class, named 'VedicDateTime' that can accommodate all possible dates, times, and overall timestamps in the Vedic calendar system. This class will be facilitating the 'VedicDateTime' package to establish a backbone for Vedic calendar-based time series analysis. It is expected that the contributor will have great coordination with the contributors of this project, while coding, integrating, documenting, and developing the package. The expected tasks for this project are as follows:

  • Understand the concept of the Vedic calendar discussed in the article.
  • Develop a date-time class that can accommodate all possible dates and times in accordance with the Vedic Calendar.
  • Develop a class in R that can be used as a Gateway to translate/convert Gregorian to Vedic timestamps and vice-versa.
  • Develop Vignette and Shiny website to demonstrate the class and package.
  • Develop an R package 'VedicDateTime' based on contributions from Part A and Part B of the project.
  • Update the article with the description of the developed class and package.

Expected impact

This project will introduce a new calendar system that can have huge potential to discover meaningful patterns in natural time series. Besides, it will document the research contributions that can be a foundation for time series analysis based on a new calendar system.

Mentors

EVALUATING MENTOR: Neeraj Dhanraj Bokde, Postdoctoral researcher, Aarhus University, Denmark [email protected]. Neeraj is Ph.D. in Data Science and contributed several R packages related to time series analysis, testbenches, and domain-specific ones. Neeraj has been a GSOC mentor since 2020. https://neerajbokde.in/

Co-mentor: Andrés E. Feijóo-Lorenzo, Associate Professor, University of Vigo, Spain [email protected]. Andrés is Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and having a huge experience in wind energy analysis.

Tests

Contributors, please do one or more of the following tests before contacting the mentors above.

Students, please do one or more of the following tests before contacting the mentors above.

  • Easy: Go through the article, and draft a short summary and future possibilities in the domain.

  • Medium: Suggest possible updates that you would like to see in the proposed package for the Vedic Calendar.

  • Hard: Develop a dummy code of 5 functions and a vignette and pass it with no Error/Warning/Note through https://win-builder.r-project.org/

Solutions of tests

Contributors, please post a link to your test results here.