Introduction
Crude oil prices by delivery period define the term structure of the market. The term structure changes shape over time given shifts in price level and slope. Term structure behavior becomes clear by combining discrete futures contracts with similar maturities into a continuous time series. R code is supplied to create continuous prices by delivery period. The purpose is to show term structure behavior and to derive risk and profitability measures for oil production, marketing and trading strategies. The resulting data is tidy, well suited for model training and out-of-sample testing.
nearest neighbor method (
A common task in spatial data analysis is extracting SpatialPoints inside a set of polygons or buffer zones. Analysts can use standard GIS or map tools to extract a set of points within an area of interest using manual “point-and-click” routines. This method is easy, but will probably prove impractical, especially in cases involving big data. The alternative is to train a machine to automatically extract the points in a polygon or buffer zone. This post achieves that task and presents a case-study with R code.
Modules, inverters and balance of system costs define the total installed cost of a solar PV system. 
