This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.
This week, we are sharing an update on the EWMA comparison by the MSHMP team.
Key points:
- Even though small differences between both EWMAs exist, the EWMA of the original 13 participating systems is still a good indicator of the overall PRRS EWMA.
- Questions from participants are always welcome and help us to provide answers and insights to all of you.
REMINDER: WHAT IS THE EWMA?
The Exponential Weighted Moving Average (EMWA) is a statistical method that averages data over time, continually decreasing the weight of data as it moves further back in time. An EWMA chart is particularly good at monitoring processes that drift over time and is used to detect small shifts in a trend.
In our project, EWMA is used to follow the evolution of the % of farms at risk that broke with PRRSV every week. EWMA incorporates all the weekly percentages recorded since the beginning of the project and gives less and less weight to the results as they are more removed in time. Therefore, the % of farms at risk that broke with PRRSV last week will have much more influence on the EMWA than the % of farms at risk that broke with PRRSV during the same week last year.
Results from this year’s comparison
EWMA 13 is still a good representation of the overall EWMA. The reason that the EWMA 13 is still representative may be because they cover a wide area of the States and they still represent a high percentage of the final EWMA. A minor difference occurred in 2017’s summer as some farms of the 13 experienced outbreaks. However, as we have discussed in previous science pages each state or region seems to have a different EWMA pattern.