Aligned Time Steps

Two datasets have aligned time steps if they have compatible time contexts meaning:

they share the same time step, for example they both have 10-minute time steps or they both have 1-hour time steps
the boundaries of the time steps fall in line with each other.

The diagram below represents two datasets whose time steps are not aligned because they do not share the same length of time step, as would be the case if one had 10-minute time steps and the other had 20-minute time steps:

The diagram below represents two datasets whose time steps are not aligned because although they share the same length of time step, the boundaries of their time steps do not fall in line with each other. This situation would occur in a case of two 10-minute datasets where one is offset by 5 minutes compared to the other, or two 60-minute datasets where one is offset by 15 or 30 minutes compared to the other.

The diagram below represents two datasets whose time steps are aligned because although they cover different periods of record, they share the same length of time step, and their time step boundaries line up with each other:

Two datasets can have aligned time steps even if their periods of record do not overlap at all. The following two datasets do have aligned time steps:

That's because if we were to extend them in time to the point that they overlapped, their time step boundaries would indeed fall in line:

When Windographer lets the user resample one or more datasets to a specific time step length, such as in the Time Series window, the Scatter Plot window, or the Long Term Adjustment window, it uses standard time step alignment.