PHP functions for correct statistics of data
I am not skilled in the world of statistics, so I hope this will be easy for someone, my lack of skill also made it very hard to find the correct search terms on this topic so I may have missed my answer in searching. anyway. I am looking at arrays of data, say CPU usage for example. how can i capture accurate information in as few data-points as possible on say, a set of data containing 1-second time intervals on cpu usage over the cores of 1 hr, where the first 30mins where 0% and the second 30 mins are 100%. right now, all i will know in one data-point i can think of is the mean, which is 50%, and not useful at all in this case. also, another case is when the usage graph was like a wave, evenly bouncing up and down between 0-100, yet still giving a mean of 50%. how can i capture this data? thanks. 
PHP functions for correct statistics of data
===

I am not skilled in the world of statistics, so I hope this will be easy for someone, my lack of skill also made it very hard to find the correct search terms on this topic so I may have missed my answer in searching. anyway. I am looking at arrays of data, say CPU usage for example. how can i capture accurate information in as few data-points as possible on say, a set of data containing 1-second time intervals on cpu usage over the cores of 1 hr, where the first 30mins where 0% and the second 30 mins are 100%. right now, all i will know in one data-point i can think of is the mean, which is 50%, and not useful at all in this case. also, another case is when the usage graph was like a wave, evenly bouncing up and down between 0-100, yet still giving a mean of 50%. how can i capture this data? thanks. 