Smoothing a time series plot

Smoothing is the process that removes the random fluctuations from time
series data. This allows any underlying trend to be more clearly seen, to fit a
line and make predictions .
Moving mean and median smoothing are techniques that are used to
smooth the time series.
3- and 5-moving mean smoothing
Example: The following table gives the number of births per month
over a calendar year in a small country hospital. Use the 3-moving
mean and the 5-moving mean methods, correct to one decimal place,
to complete the table.
Find the mean of the 3 values (number of births) and replace it with the
middle.
Find the mean of the 5 values (number of births) and replace it with the
middle.

If we smooth over an even number of points, we run into a problem.

The centre of the set of points is not at a time point belonging to the
original series. Usually, we solve this problem by using a process
called centring.
 4-mean smoothing with centring

Example: Use 4- mean smoothing with centring to smooth the

number of births per month over a calendar year in a small country
hospital.
Example: The table below displays the total rainfall (in mm) in a reservoir
over one- year period.

Using 3- mean moving average and 2 - mean moving average with centring,
find the smoothed values for the total rainfall in April.

Find the 3-moving median smoothing of the following data by finding the
median of the 3 values and replacing it with the middle.
 3-median smoothing using a graphing approach
Construct a 3- median smoothed plot of the time series data shown
Example: The 5 points shown on the grid have been taken
from a time series plot that is to be smoothed using median smoothing. The
coordinates of the median of these five points are:

A (3,1) B (3,2) C(3,2.4) D(3,2.5) E (3,3)

The point (3,2) belongs to

the 3-median line or the 5- median line

of the original graph .

QUESTIONS

1
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3
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5
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ANSWERS

The smoothed plot show that the ‘average’ maximum temperature changes
relatively slowly over the 10-day period (the5-day average varies by only
five degrees) when compared to the daily maximum, which can vary quite
widely (for example, nearly 20 degrees between the 4th and 5th day) over the
same period of time.
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