A "smoothing method" refers to a technique or approach used to make something appear or feel smoother. It is often applied to remove roughness, irregularities, or fluctuations to create a more uniform or consistent outcome. Full definition
Under actuarial smoothing methods, these losses will be phased in, raising required amortization payments over the next few years. (educationnext.org)
Never do the authors describe how many records and how many different smoothing methods they went through before they found this one case where the significance is greater than 95 %. (realclimate.org)
And in a completely unrelated question, what is the best smoothing method to use on data that isn't evenly sampled? (tamino.wordpress.com)