Simple way to calculate median with MySQL

Question

What\'s the simplest (and hopefully not too slow) way to calculate the median with MySQL? I\'ve used AVG(x) for finding the mean, but I\'m having a hard time fi

Answer 1

as i just needed a median AND percentile solution, I made a simple and quite flexible function based on the findings in this thread. I know that I am happy myself if I find "readymade" functions that are easy to include in my projects, so I decided to quickly share:

function mysql_percentile($table, $column, $where, $percentile = 0.5) {

    $sql = "
            SELECT `t1`.`".$column."` as `percentile` FROM (
            SELECT @rownum:=@rownum+1 as `row_number`, `d`.`".$column."`
              FROM `".$table."` `d`,  (SELECT @rownum:=0) `r`
              ".$where."
              ORDER BY `d`.`".$column."`
            ) as `t1`, 
            (
              SELECT count(*) as `total_rows`
              FROM `".$table."` `d`
              ".$where."
            ) as `t2`
            WHERE 1
            AND `t1`.`row_number`=floor(`total_rows` * ".$percentile.")+1;
        ";

    $result = sql($sql, 1);

    if (!empty($result)) {
        return $result['percentile'];       
    } else {
        return 0;
    }

}

Usage is very easy, example from my current project:

...
$table = DBPRE."zip_".$slug;
$column = 'seconds';
$where = "WHERE `reached` = '1' AND `time` >= '".$start_time."'";

    $reaching['median'] = mysql_percentile($table, $column, $where, 0.5);
    $reaching['percentile25'] = mysql_percentile($table, $column, $where, 0.25);
    $reaching['percentile75'] = mysql_percentile($table, $column, $where, 0.75);
...