Re: wip: functions median and percentile

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org>
Cc: Kevin Grittner <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>, Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: wip: functions median and percentile
Date: 2010-08-19 17:25:36
Message-ID: 21527.1282238736@sss.pgh.pa.us
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David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> writes:
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 12:12:12PM -0500, Kevin Grittner wrote:
>> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/median
>>
>> If you do a google search for "median" and poke around, you'll find
>> many places where this is the only definition mentioned; the others
>> seem to be rather infrequently used. Why not make the commone usage
>> convenient?

> The reason not to is the same reason that MEDIAN doesn't appear in the
> SQL standard, namely that what's common in one field is wrong in
> another.

Hmm, do you have any *evidence* that that's why it's not in the standard?

My own take on that is that it's reasonably probable that the SQL
committee might standardize a function by that name someday. What we
need to be worrying about is the prospect that if there are multiple
definitions for the term, they might pick a different one than we did.
A name like "arithmetic_median" seems much less likely to get blindsided
by future standardization.

regards, tom lane

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