Moving Average

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Calculate

Example: a shop's monthly sales over a year go up, but swing from one month to the next. Does the 3-month moving average show the trend without the back-and-forth? Change the series and the window to work out your own case.

Series x_t In time order, separated by spaces or commas. Window k

Step by step

What each term means

Moving Average (MAₜ): The mean of the k most recent values up to period t. Computed period by period, it forms a smoother series than the original.
Values in the Window: The last k values of the series. Each period, the oldest leaves and the newest comes in: the window “moves”.
Window Size (k): How many periods go into each average. A larger window removes more noise, but reacts more slowly to real changes.