How to round an average to 2 decimal places in PostgreSQL?

Question

I am using PostgreSQL via the Ruby gem \'sequel\'.

I\'m trying to round to two decimal places.

Here\'s my code:

SELECT ROUND(AVG(some_column)         


        

Answer 1

Try also the old syntax for casting,

SELECT ROUND(AVG(some_column)::numeric,2)    
FROM table;

works with any version of PostgreSQL.

There are a lack of overloads in some PostgreSQL functions, why (???): I think "it is a lack" (!), but @CraigRinger, @Catcall and the PostgreSQL team agree about "pg's historic rationale".

PS: another point about rounding is accuracy, check @IanKenney's answer.

---

Overloading as casting strategy

You can overload the ROUND function with,

 CREATE FUNCTION ROUND(float,int) RETURNS NUMERIC AS $$
    SELECT ROUND($1::numeric,$2);
 $$ language SQL IMMUTABLE;

Now your instruction will works fine, try (after function creation)

 SELECT round(1/3.,4); -- 0.3333 numeric

but it returns a NUMERIC type... To preserve the first commom-usage overload, we can return a FLOAT type when a TEXT parameter is offered,

 CREATE FUNCTION ROUND(float, text, int DEFAULT 0) 
 RETURNS FLOAT AS $$
    SELECT CASE WHEN $2='dec'
                THEN ROUND($1::numeric,$3)::float
                -- ... WHEN $2='hex' THEN ... WHEN $2='bin' THEN... complete!
                ELSE 'NaN'::float  -- like an error message 
            END;
 $$ language SQL IMMUTABLE;

Try

 SELECT round(1/3.,'dec',4);   -- 0.3333 float!
 SELECT round(2.8+1/3.,'dec',1); -- 3.1 float!
 SELECT round(2.8+1/3.,'dec'::text); -- need to cast string? pg bug 

---

PS: checking \df round after overloadings, will show something like,

 Schema     |  Name | Result data type | Argument data types 
------------+-------+------------------+----------------------------
 myschema   | round | double precision | double precision, text, int
 myschema   | round | numeric          | double precision, int
 pg_catalog | round | double precision | double precision            
 pg_catalog | round | numeric          | numeric   
 pg_catalog | round | numeric          | numeric, int          

The pg_catalog functions are the default ones, see manual of build-in math functions.