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DeWayne Derryberry, Associate Professor, Mathematics Department, Idaho State University

The Wolf number (also known as the International sunspot number, relative sunspot number, or Zürich number) is a quantity that measures the number of sunspots and groups of sunspots present on the surface of the sun (Wikipedia). Sunspot activity varies in intensity with a period of about 9.5 to 11 years. The Time series data library in DataMarket has the Wolf number for sunspot activity from 1700 to 1988 (I will not explain why there are Wolf sunspot numbers from 1700 to 1848, the year Wolf was born).  I will fit a moving average periodic function to the data and use this model to display the variations in the period, amplitude, and mean of the sunspot activity. There will be lots of plots and few equations.

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