Area under a curve for multiple "X,Y" cycles, when every Y cycle has unique shape

gutloja

Hello,

I have a data set where:

x = hour
y = average tree water use [out 3, 2 or 1 values due to data loss]

This cycle repeats for months at the time [24 hours per day], and every day "y" has a different pattern. Here is a three-day sample data:

Adding up hours is an easy way to do it, but assumes water use was the same during the entire hour [wrong assumption].

Is there a better way to integrate the area under each curve so that the resolution of "y" is not one hour?

I already tried fitting various non-linear models from the Model Library, but none yields favorable results, and can't make them adaptive to the daily changes in curve shape of "y".

Next I am going to try a Gaussian Process to see if I can get to increase the resolution.

Thank you,

-JGL

vince_faller

The best way to do this is a riemann sum.  If all of your x intervals are the same then you can just do the sum and multiply by your interval. 

So just add up all of your points in the day and multiply 1 in this case.