---
title: Time series utilities overview | Tiger Data Docs
description: Functions for time bucketing, ordered selection, and time-based calculations
---

Time series utilities provide essential functions for working with time-series data, including bucketing data by time intervals, selecting values based on temporal ordering, and performing time-based calculations.

## Samples

### Time bucketing

Bucket temperature readings into 5-minute intervals and calculate the average:

```
SELECT time_bucket('5 minutes', time) AS five_min, avg(temperature)
FROM readings
GROUP BY five_min
ORDER BY five_min DESC;
```

### Ordered selection

Get the first and last temperature values for each device in 1-hour buckets:

```
SELECT
  device_id,
  time_bucket('1 hour', time) AS hour,
  first(temperature, time) AS first_temp,
  last(temperature, time) AS last_temp
FROM readings
GROUP BY device_id, hour
ORDER BY hour DESC;
```

### Month normalization

Normalize monthly sales metrics to account for varying month lengths:

```
SELECT
  time_bucket('1 month', sale_date) AS month,
  SUM(amount) AS total_sales,
  month_normalize(SUM(amount), time_bucket('1 month', sale_date)) AS normalized_sales
FROM sales
GROUP BY month
ORDER BY month;
```

## Available functions

### Time bucketing

- [`time_bucket()`](/docs/reference/timescaledb/hyperfunctions/time-series-utilities/time_bucket/index.md): bucket rows by time interval to calculate aggregates
- [`time_bucket_ng()`](/docs/reference/timescaledb/hyperfunctions/time-series-utilities/time_bucket/index.md): next generation time bucketing with additional features

### Ordered selection

- [`first()`](/docs/reference/timescaledb/hyperfunctions/time-series-utilities/first/index.md): get the first value in one column when rows are ordered by another column
- [`last()`](/docs/reference/timescaledb/hyperfunctions/time-series-utilities/last/index.md): get the last value in one column when rows are ordered by another column

### Time utilities

- [`days_in_month()`](/docs/reference/timescaledb/hyperfunctions/time-series-utilities/days_in_month/index.md): calculate the number of days in a month given a timestamp
- [`month_normalize()`](/docs/reference/timescaledb/hyperfunctions/time-series-utilities/month_normalize/index.md): normalize a monthly metric based on the number of days in the month