How to calculate continuous smooth event rate based on event times?

Question

Based on a continuous realtime event stream (where time of every event is easily known, but each event has no value, they are all identical), how program a filter/process th

Answer 1

By averaging. for example everytime you get an event add one to a. every second remove 1/60 of a. it will give you a simple average with a sliding window of about one minute.

Answer 2

This can be implemented with a moving average. Take your last N events where N is the size of your averaging window. Compute the time difference between the first and the last of these N events. If you are measuring in seconds and want the rate in event per minute you would then divide 60 seconds by your time difference expressed in seconds and you multiply by N-1.

currentAvgRate = (N-1) * 60 / (time different between last N events)

The greater the value of N the smoother your curve will be, but also the less it will react to local changes.