Successive differences and moving averages
A successive difference means the difference between the successive observations. For time series y, the successive difference will be (y2-y1), (y3-y2), (y4-y3).
The moving average is used to understand the direction of the current trend.
The moving average will smooth the data if there is a variation in consecutive points. It will smoothen the curve on the base of the average.
R does not have any direct implementation of the moving average, but zoo
and the forecast
package provides the various functions to find the moving average.
Getting ready
You have completed the preceding recipes and have my_series
and my_series1
in R available.
How to do it...
Perform the following steps with R:
> ma(my_series, order=10) Output: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep 2011 NA NA NA NA NA 3224.85 3170.25 3097.80 3083.95 2012 3156.60 3186.45 3157.40 3196.90 3215.05 3227.10 3222.55 3208.00 3281.40...