Definition
Plain language
A running average that leans more on recent numbers than old ones, so it tracks changes without jumping around on every new data point.
As stated in the literature
A weighted moving average whose influence on past observations decays geometrically; used in this corpus to smooth noisy signals like the mutual-information drift proxy and running tool-duration estimates.
Also called: EMA, exponential smoothing
Why it matters: It smooths out noisy measurements so a system can track real trends without overreacting to every fluctuation.
For example, a fitness app's 'recent pace' number leans on your last few minutes of running rather than jumping around with every single stride.
Heard on the show
“On top of that, the system tracks how many tools are active and how long they're typically taking, with exponential smoothing so a single outlier doesn't throw the estimate.”Episode 016 — Why Your Coding Agent Stalls While the GPU Runs Hot