[Proposal] Preserving the type returned by the aggregator for mean, avg, and median instead of coercing to an int. #2868
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…ian instead of coercing to an int.
saulpw
reviewed
Sep 20, 2025
| vd.aggregator('avg', mean, 'arithmetic mean of values', type=float) | ||
| vd.aggregator('mean', mean, 'arithmetic mean of values', type=float) | ||
| vd.aggregator('median', statistics.median, 'median of values') | ||
| vd.aggregator('avg', mean, 'arithmetic mean of values', type=lambda x: x) |
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Use anytype for the identity function as a type.
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Using anytype instead of lambda x:x fails the following tests:
- tests/golden/aggregators-set.tsv
- tests/golden/avg-nulls.tsv
- tests/golden/freq-error.tsv
- tests/golden/freq-summary.tsv
- tests/golden/pivot.tsv
Lots of n.00 that turn into n.0 but also a 624.00 that turns into a 623.9999999999999
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Huh! That's weird to me. I guess the TSV saver must do something special for anytype columns?
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visidata’s current behavior for average, mean, and median is to coerce the result to a float which works fine for the builtin types but doesn’t play nice when adding custom precision preserving types, like Python’s
Fraction, andDecimaltypes.It would also be possible to replace
sum(vals) / len(val)by Python’s nativestatistics.meanwhich also preserves the int type when possible:statistics.mean([1, 2]) # 1.5 (float)statistics.mean([1, 2, 3]) # 2 (int)But that would mean that two golden files have to change since they would lose some
.00.