hourofweek

Hourofweek is a time-based metric that encodes a specific hour within a week. It is used in data analysis, logging, and scheduling to normalize data across weeks and to compare weekly patterns.

Calculation and conventions vary, but the most common approach uses a week that starts on Monday. In this scheme, hours are numbered from 0 to 167: hour 0 is Monday 00:00, hour 23 is Monday 23:00, hour 24 is Tuesday 00:00, up to hour 167, which is Sunday 23:00. Some systems use a 1-168 range. Representations may also combine year, week number, and hour, or store the value as a timestamp. To avoid shifts caused by daylight saving time, many implementations use UTC; if local time is used, the hour of week can change with DST.

Examples help illustrate the concept: Friday at 15:00 in a Monday-start week corresponds to hour 111 (Monday 0:00 through Friday 15:00). Sunday 23:00 corresponds to hour 167.

Applications include temporal aggregation in dashboards and databases, enabling analysis of weekly cycles, anomaly detection, capacity planning, and scheduling of batch jobs within fixed weekly windows. The metric is particularly useful for identifying recurring patterns, such as peak usage hours or operational load, across different dates but within the same weekly cycle.

Limitations include varying definitions across systems (different week starts, time zones), and the need for consistent conventions to ensure comparability.