Calculate the moving average
Use movingAverage() or timedMovingAverage() to return the moving average of data.
1. data
2. |> movingAverage(n: 5)
4. // OR
6. data
7. |> timedMovingAverage(every: 5m, period: 10m)
movingAverage()
For each row in a table, movingAverage() returns the average of the current value and previous values where n is the total number of values used to calculate the average.
If n = 3:
| Row # | Calculation |
|---|---|
| 1 | Insufficient number of rows |
| 2 | Insufficient number of rows |
| 3 | (Row1 + Row2 + Row3) / 3 |
| 4 | (Row2 + Row3 + Row4) / 3 |
| 5 | (Row3 + Row4 + Row5) / 3 |
Given the following input:
| _time | _value |
|---|---|
| 2020-01-01T00:01:00Z | 1.0 |
| 2020-01-01T00:02:00Z | 1.2 |
| 2020-01-01T00:03:00Z | 1.8 |
| 2020-01-01T00:04:00Z | 0.9 |
| 2020-01-01T00:05:00Z | 1.4 |
| 2020-01-01T00:06:00Z | 2.0 |
The following would return:
1. |> movingAverage(n: 3)
| _time | _value |
|---|---|
| 2020-01-01T00:03:00Z | 1.33 |
| 2020-01-01T00:04:00Z | 1.30 |
| 2020-01-01T00:05:00Z | 1.36 |
| 2020-01-01T00:06:00Z | 1.43 |
timedMovingAverage()
For each row in a table, timedMovingAverage() returns the average of the current value and all row values in the previous period (duration). It returns moving averages at a frequency defined by the every parameter.
Each color in the diagram below represents a period of time used to calculate an average and the time a point representing the average is returned. If every = 30m and period = 1h:

Given the following input:
| _time | _value |
|---|---|
| 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z | 1.0 |
| 2020-01-01T00:30:00Z | 1.2 |
| 2020-01-01T01:00:00Z | 1.8 |
| 2020-01-01T01:30:00Z | 0.9 |
| 2020-01-01T02:00:00Z | 1.4 |
| 2020-01-01T02:30:00Z | 2.0 |
| 2020-01-01T03:00:00Z | 1.9 |
The following would return:
1. |> timedMovingAverage(every: 30m, period: 1h)
| _time | _value |
|---|---|
| 2020-01-01T00:30:00Z | 1.0 |
| 2020-01-01T01:00:00Z | 1.1 |
| 2020-01-01T01:30:00Z | 1.5 |
| 2020-01-01T02:00:00Z | 1.35 |
| 2020-01-01T02:30:00Z | 1.15 |
| 2020-01-01T03:00:00Z | 1.7 |
| 2020-01-01T03:00:00Z | 2 |
