Moving average or running mean

Question

Is there a SciPy function or NumPy function or module for Python that calculates the running mean of a 1D array given a specific window?

Answer 1

All the aforementioned solutions are poor because they lack

• speed due to a native python instead of a numpy vectorized implementation,
• numerical stability due to poor use of numpy.cumsum, or
• speed due to O(len(x) * w) implementations as convolutions.

Given

import numpy
m = 10000
x = numpy.random.rand(m)
w = 1000

Note that x_[:w].sum() equals x[:w-1].sum(). So for the first average the numpy.cumsum(...) adds x[w] / w (via x_[w+1] / w), and subtracts 0 (from x_[0] / w). This results in x[0:w].mean()

Via cumsum, you'll update the second average by additionally add x[w+1] / w and subtracting x[0] / w, resulting in x[1:w+1].mean().

This goes on until x[-w:].mean() is reached.

x_ = numpy.insert(x, 0, 0)
sliding_average = x_[:w].sum() / w + numpy.cumsum(x_[w:] - x_[:-w]) / w

This solution is vectorized, O(m), readable and numerically stable.