How can I (efficiently) compute a moving average of a vector?

Question

I\'ve got a vector and I want to calculate the moving average of it (using a window of width 5).

For instance, if the vector in question is [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

Answer 1

If you want to preserve the size of your input vector, I suggest using filter

>> x = 1:8;
>> y = filter(ones(1,5), 1, x)

y =
     1     3     6    10    15    20    25     30

>> y = (5:end)

y =
     15    20    25    30