In mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, a boxcar function is any function

Function (mathematics)

In mathematics, a function associates one quantity, the argument of the function, also known as the input, with another quantity, the value of the function, also known as the output. A function assigns exactly one output to each input. The argument and the value may be real numbers, but they can...

 which is zero over the entire
real line

Real line

In mathematics, the real line, or real number line is the line whose points are the real numbers. That is, the real line is the set of all real numbers, viewed as a geometric space, namely the Euclidean space of dimension one...

 except for a single interval where it is equal to a constant, A; it is a simple step function

Step function

In mathematics, a function on the real numbers is called a step function if it can be written as a finite linear combination of indicator functions of intervals...

. The boxcar function can be expressed in terms of the uniform distribution

Uniform distribution (continuous)

In probability theory and statistics, the continuous uniform distribution or rectangular distribution is a family of probability distributions such that for each member of the family, all intervals of the same length on the distribution's support are equally probable. The support is defined by...

 as


where f(a,b;x) is the uniform distribution of x for the interval [a, b].
As with most such discontinuous functions

Continuous function

In mathematics, a continuous function is a function for which, intuitively, "small" changes in the input result in "small" changes in the output. Otherwise, a function is said to be "discontinuous". A continuous function with a continuous inverse function is called "bicontinuous".Continuity of...

, there is a question of the value at the transition points. These values are probably best chosen for each individual application.

When a boxcar function is selected as the impulse response of a filter, the result is a moving average filter.