This is the documentation for CDH 5.1.x. Documentation for other versions is available at Cloudera Documentation.

AVG Function

An aggregate function that returns the average value from a set of numbers. Its single argument can be numeric column, or the numeric result of a function or expression applied to the column value. Rows with a NULL value for the specified column are ignored. If the table is empty, or all the values supplied to AVG are NULL, AVG returns NULL.

When the query contains a GROUP BY clause, returns one value for each combination of grouping values.

Return type: DOUBLE

Examples:

-- Average all the non-NULL values in a column.
insert overwrite avg_t values (2),(4),(6),(null),(null);
-- The average of the above values is 4: (2+4+6) / 3. The 2 NULL values are ignored.
select avg(x) from avg_t;
-- Average only certain values from the column.
select avg(x) from t1 where month = 'January' and year = '2013';
-- Apply a calculation to the value of the column before averaging.
select avg(x/3) from t1;
-- Apply a function to the value of the column before averaging.
-- Here we are substituting a value of 0 for all NULLs in the column,
-- so that those rows do factor into the return value.
select avg(isnull(x,0)) from t1;
-- Apply some number-returning function to a string column and average the results.
-- If column s contains any NULLs, length(s) also returns NULL and those rows are ignored.
select avg(length(s)) from t1;
-- Can also be used in combination with DISTINCT and/or GROUP BY.
-- Return more than one result.
select month, year, avg(page_visits) from web_stats group by month, year;
-- Filter the input to eliminate duplicates before performing the calculation.
select avg(distinct x) from t1;
-- Filter the output after performing the calculation.
select avg(x) from t1 group by y having avg(x) between 1 and 20;
Page generated September 3, 2015.