Calculating moving average

Question

I\'m trying to use R to calculate the moving average over a series of values in a matrix. The normal R mailing list search hasn\'t been very helpful though. There doesn\'t s

Answer 1

EDIT: took great joy in adding the side parameter, for a moving average (or sum, or ...) of e.g. the past 7 days of a Date vector.

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For people just wanting to calculate this themselves, it's nothing more than:

# x = vector with numeric data
# w = window length
y <- numeric(length = length(x))

for (i in seq_len(length(x))) {
  ind <- c((i - floor(w / 2)):(i + floor(w / 2)))
  ind <- ind[ind %in% seq_len(length(x))]
  y[i] <- mean(x[ind])
}

y

But it gets fun to make it independent of mean(), so you can calculate any 'moving' function!

# our working horse:
moving_fn <- function(x, w, fun, ...) {
  # x = vector with numeric data
  # w = window length
  # fun = function to apply
  # side = side to take, (c)entre, (l)eft or (r)ight
  # ... = parameters passed on to 'fun'
  y <- numeric(length(x))
  for (i in seq_len(length(x))) {
    if (side %in% c("c", "centre", "center")) {
      ind <- c((i - floor(w / 2)):(i + floor(w / 2)))
    } else if (side %in% c("l", "left")) {
      ind <- c((i - floor(w) + 1):i)
    } else if (side %in% c("r", "right")) {
      ind <- c(i:(i + floor(w) - 1))
    } else {
      stop("'side' must be one of 'centre', 'left', 'right'", call. = FALSE)
    }
    ind <- ind[ind %in% seq_len(length(x))]
    y[i] <- fun(x[ind], ...)
  }
  y
}

# and now any variation you can think of!
moving_average <- function(x, w = 5, side = "centre", na.rm = FALSE) {
  moving_fn(x = x, w = w, fun = mean, side = side, na.rm = na.rm)
}

moving_sum <- function(x, w = 5, side = "centre", na.rm = FALSE) {
  moving_fn(x = x, w = w, fun = sum, side = side, na.rm = na.rm)
}

moving_maximum <- function(x, w = 5, side = "centre", na.rm = FALSE) {
  moving_fn(x = x, w = w, fun = max, side = side, na.rm = na.rm)
}

moving_median <- function(x, w = 5, side = "centre", na.rm = FALSE) {
  moving_fn(x = x, w = w, fun = median, side = side, na.rm = na.rm)
}

moving_Q1 <- function(x, w = 5, side = "centre", na.rm = FALSE) {
  moving_fn(x = x, w = w, fun = quantile, side = side, na.rm = na.rm, 0.25)
}

moving_Q3 <- function(x, w = 5, side = "centre", na.rm = FALSE) {
  moving_fn(x = x, w = w, fun = quantile, side = side, na.rm = na.rm, 0.75)
}