This is going to sound like a weird reference to more info, but the
Hacker's Diet has a good section explaining rolling averages. It's
really good for indicating trends instead of daily fluctuations.

Here's the start of why to use them:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsection1_2_4_0_4.html#SECTION0240400000000000000
What I really like is the Floats and Sinkers charts a few pages later.

And here's the explanation of the math:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsection1_4_1_0_8.html#SECTION0410800000000000000

And that's about all I've got. I know next to nothing about statistics.

-Kevin

On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:33:42 -0400, Jerry Johnson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> To smooth a curve, you can take a rolling average (by taking the average of the data point and a couple of datapoints adjacent)
>
> for example
>
> 3day - take the day before, the day, and the day after, and average them (db+d+da)/3
>
>         1day    3day    5day
>
> s       2
> m       2       1.66
> t       1       1.66    1.8
> w       2       1.66    2.0
> t       2       2.33    2.2
> f       3       2.66    2.8
> s       3       3.33    3.0
> s       4       3.33    3.2
> m       3       3.33    5.4
> t       3       6.66    5.4
> w       14      10      5.0
> t       3       6.33    5.0
> f       2       2.66    4.8
> s       3       2.33
> s       2
>
> You'll see that the 5 day is mush smoother a curve than the 3day, which is smoother than the spiky day version.
>
> Does this help?
> Jerry Johnson
>
> >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/12/04 12:06PM >>>
> What do you mean by moving average? Just show the last N days in a
> range you mean? (That actually would help me.)
>
>
>
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