# Verb for subtracting the mean?

Is there a verb for removing the mean or DC component of a signal? I am trying to name a flag for doing just that.

"Normalize" can mean many things, so I don't think that would be a good choice.

I've heard this referred to as demeaning a signal, or applying a DC notch (or, in some more hardware-related domains, a DC block). More generally, it might be called just highpass filtering the signal to remove the DC component.

• That's a demeaning way to refer to it! ;-) – Peter K. Apr 4 '13 at 13:05

I've heard the word centering for setting the mean of a signal to 0.

I've heard this called detrending. Although DC removal is a subset of what this means, the Mathworks refers to it in their detrend function:

The MATLAB® function detrend subtracts the mean or a best-fit line
(in the least-squares sense) from your data. If your data contains
several data columns, detrend treats each data column separately.

• Peter, I don't believe removal of mean is 'de-trending'. As you of course know the mean simply removes the DC/constant component, however, the de-trending removes the uber low frequency components. (Yes I think MATLAB's usage of the verb is wrong. :-) ) – Spacey Apr 4 '13 at 14:29
• @Mohammad: Agreed it's not quite right, but it is the way I've heard it used. – Peter K. Apr 4 '13 at 15:07
• Peter, yeah, the terminology can get muddied up sometimes. – Spacey Apr 4 '13 at 16:01

Another potential candidate:

"Zero-DC-ing the signal"

A seldomly-used term is symmetrization, with accounts for removing a central tendency value (could be the average, the median, the midrange, depending on the loss function to minimize).

References: