I am having trouble with incorrect averages on categorized sections when using the “Average per document” column feature. I have pasted a link below to an image of my view with the incorrect values:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jsimon/view.jpg
It will calculate monthly and quarterly averages ok, but the yearly averages and averages for a certain “name” are incorrect (as indicated by the red circles).
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated as I’m in a time crunch on this project!
Subject: Incorrectly calculated category averages
Can you clarify what is “wrong”.
Looking at the values for that year (in your second image) you have:
100,95,60 95,95,95 60
Total = 600 / 7 = 86!
Which is the value showing in your first image.
What am I missing?
Rufus.
Subject: RE: Incorrectly calculated category averages
What’s confusing me is that if I average all of the red and green values by hand I get 86, but if I average the quarterly values Q1 (91) and Q2 (60) I get 76 instead of 86???
Subject: RE: Incorrectly calculated category averages
I understand that based on the red/green numbers it’s calculating correctly, but if you average the blue values next to Q1 (91) and Q2 (60) you get 76 instead of 86.
Subject: RE: Incorrectly calculated category averages
So let’s say that you have 100,000 documents in Q1 that all have the value 16, and one document so far in Q2 and it has the value 30. Then you think your average for the year should be 23, as opposed to 16.0002.
I don’t understand how that calculation is useful.
If that is what you’re after, there’s not a way to do that in a view. Averages are always based on the sums of documents – not on the sums of other averages. Otherwise, some documents get more weight than others, and that’s not really cool.
Of course, you can always create a rich text report that contains whatever text you want. But consider; you’re calculating some kind of statistic per person or per department. Do you want to have a system where people can manipulate their averages by timing when something gets turned in? “Oh, I’m going to have a high percentage on this one. I’ll wait until early next quarter to finish it so that my overall average is higher when we have the staff review.”
Incidentally, the “average per subcategory” option, which I’ve been playing around with to see exactly what it does, apparently gives the total of all documents in the category, divided by the number of subcategories rather than the number of documents. E.g. if category 2005 / subcategory Q1 contained 5 and 7, the subcategory average would be 6. Then if 2005 / Q2 contained one document with value 10, the average for category 2005 would be (5+7+10)/2 = 11.
Subject: Incorrectly calculated category averages
Perhaps you wanted “average per subcategory” rather than “average per document”.
Subject: RE: Incorrectly calculated category averages
I tried that as well and it also calculated incorrectly: