05 — Foundations

Resampling & Frequency#

Foundations✓ Mathematical
◆ The PatternConverting between time granularities

Downsampling aggregates high-frequency data (e.g., ticks → daily). Upsampling fills gaps in lower-frequency data (e.g., monthly → daily with interpolation). Proper frequency alignment prevents lookahead bias and ensures your features match your target.

// Interactive — resampling effects
Target Frequency1x
# Python — resampling with pandas
# Downsample: daily → weekly (OHLCV)
weekly = df.resample('W').agg({
    'open': 'first', 'high': 'max',
    'low': 'min', 'close': 'last',
    'volume': 'sum'
})
# Upsample: monthly → daily (forward fill)
daily = monthly.resample('D').ffill()
Pattern bridge: Choosing the right frequency is the time-series equivalent of context window sizing in LLMs — too little history and you miss patterns, too much and you drown in noise. In markets, timeframe selection is this exact tradeoff.
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