Time average

A moving average is commonly used with time series data to smooth out short-term fluctuations and highlight longer-term trends or cycles - in this case the calculation is sometimes called a time average. The threshold between short-term and long-term depends on the application, and the parameters of the moving average will be set accordingly. It is also used in economics to examine gross domestic product, employment or other macroeconomic time series. When used with non-time series data, a moving average filters higher frequency components without any specific connection to time, although typically some kind of ordering is implied. Viewed simplistically it can be regarded as smoothing the data.