Histogram Smoothing - histogram

Question

I have a probably pretty simple question but I am still not sure!
Actually I only want to smooth a histogram, and I am not sure which of the following to methods is correct. Would I do it like this:
vector<double> mask(3);
mask[0] = 0.25; mask[1] = 0.5; mask[2] = 0.25;
vector<double> tmpVect(histogram->size());
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < histogram->size(); i++)
tmpVect[i] = (*histogram)[i];
for (int bin = 1; bin < histogram->size()-1; bin++) {
double smoothedValue = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < mask.size(); i++) {
smoothedValue += tmpVect[bin-1+i]*mask[i];
}
(*histogram)[bin] = smoothedValue;
}
Or would you usually do it like this?:
vector<double> mask(3);
mask[0] = 0.25; mask[1] = 0.5; mask[2] = 0.25;
for (int bin = 1; bin < histogram->size()-1; bin++) {
double smoothedValue = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < mask.size(); i++) {
smoothedValue += (*histogram)[bin-1+i]*mask[i];
}
(*histogram)[bin] = smoothedValue;
}
My Questin is: Is it resonable to copy the histogram in a extra vector first so that when I smooth at bin i I can use the original i-1 value or would I simply do smoothedValue += (*histogram)[bin-1+i]*mask[i];, so that I use the already smoothed i-1 value instead the original one.
Regards & Thanks for a reply.

Answer 1

Your intuition is right: you need a temporary vector. Otherwise, you will end up using partly old values, and partly new values, and the result will not be correct. Try it yourself on paper with a simple example.
There are two ways you can write this algorithm:
Copy the data to a temporary vector first; then read from that one, and write to histogram. This is what you did in your first code fragment.
Read from histogram and write to a temporary vector; then copy from the temporary vector back to histogram.
To prevent needless copying of data, you can use vector::swap. This is an extremely fast operation that swaps the contents of two vectors. Using strategy 2 above, this would result in:
vector<double> mask(3);
mask[0] = 0.25; mask[1] = 0.5; mask[2] = 0.25;
vector<double> newHistogram(histogram->size());
for (int bin = 1; bin < histogram->size()-1; bin++) {
double smoothedValue = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < mask.size(); i++) {
smoothedValue += (*histogram)[bin-1+i]*mask[i];
}
newHistogram[bin] = smoothedValue;
}
histogram->swap(newHistogram);