Average function without overflow exception

Question

.NET Framework 3.5.
I\'m trying to calculate the average of some pretty large numbers.
For instance:

using System;
using System.Linq;

class Program
{
           


        

Answer 1

I guess there has to be a compromise somewhere or the other. If the numbers are really getting so large then few digits of lower orders (say lower 5 digits) might not affect the result as much.

Another issue is where you don't really know the size of the dataset coming in, especially in stream/real time cases. Here I don't see any solution other then the (previousAverage*oldCount + newValue) / (oldCount <- oldCount+1)

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Here's a suggestion:

*LargestDataTypePossible* currentAverage;
*SomeSuitableDatatypeSupportingRationalValues* newValue;

*int* count;
addToCurrentAverage(value){
 newValue = value/100000;
 count = count + 1;
 currentAverage = (currentAverage * (count-1) + newValue) / count;
}

getCurrentAverage(){
 return currentAverage * 100000;
}