Add Median as a calculation function

[mertbakir]

What would you like to be added:

Is it possible to add median, as calculation options beside min, max, mean, count and all others?

• In Single Stats Panel and new Transform options (Group by calculations).
• I'm using Postgres, if that matters.

Why is this needed:

Because medians usually most useful than means.

[papagian]

Can you be more specific? Which calculation options you mean? Which visualisation / datasource do you use?

[grafanabot]

Thanks for creating this issue! We think it's missing some basic information.

Follow the issue template and add additional information that will help us replicate the problem.
For data visualization issues:

• Query results from the inspect drawer (data tab & query inspector)
• Panel settings can be extracted in the panel inspect drawer JSON tab

For dashboard related issues:

• Dashboard JSON can be found in the dashboard settings JSON model view

For authentication and alerting issues, Grafana server logs are useful.

Happy graphing!

[mertbakir]

Can you be more specific? Which calculation options you mean? Which visualisation / datasource do you use?

Calculation in: Single Stats Panel and
Calculation in: Transform options.

I use Postgres but didn't think it was related. It should work for all available data sources.

[pkolyvas]

We're in the process of moving Grafana feature requests to GitHub Discussions. This issue is being moved to Discussions or has been moved from our issues list, depending on where you're seeing this message.

We hope to use the discussion thread to continue building use cases, and additional evidence based on engagement/voting, in order to help us prioritize this feature request later on down the road.

As with all things Grafana, we value your input and participation in this project and appreciate your patience during this transitional period. Looking forward to the discussion!

[dstrivelli]

Is there any plan to support a MEDIAN type average in addition to just MEAN? Also seeking this functionality or a way of accomplishing the same thing via math.

[roygv]

To add some background. In iIoT there are many reads from sensors of values that follow setpoints. These are closed loop control systems where the operator sets where the value should be according to a recipe and the system is sending control signals to nudge the value to move towards the setpoint. To track it for alerting, we want to look at the difference between the value and the setpoint. Alas, when the setpoint changes there is an immediate expected difference that gets closed quickly that shouldn't trip the alarm. One way of avoiding an alarm is to average the difference over an interval. However, the spike still skews the avg. A much better solution is to use the median since it is less sensitive to outliers. If you are lucky enough to have median() supported by your data source - great! less traffic on the wire. For the rest of us, having median() added to the above list of aggregates will be the next best thing.

[sophienova]

My team would also greatly benefit from this feature being added -- we were pretty surprised that a tool like Grafana didn't already have the functionality to calculate a median. We haven't found a great workaround for this yet and would love to know if there are plans to implement anytime soon!

[perkam]

I would also love to have median available - it is much more useful than mean.

[shapirus]

Not only median, but also mode (aka "most frequently occuring") would be useful to have. This is often the most useful function to process real life data where mean, aka average, gives misleading results.

[M-M-M-M]

median function would also be very useful in alert rule in reduce in function:

A workaround is to use the classic but do not provide all the feature and chaining of new way alerts are build

[natellium]

Hey there! We want to let you all know that we are moving to Github Issues for feature requests. You can read more about the move here.

I will be closing this discussion, but if you’re still interested in this request being implemented please don’t hesitate to open a feature request. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your contributions!

[makkes]

I must admit this looks a little funny in the light of this having originally been a GitHub issue where in its last comment it's being said "We're in the process of moving Grafana feature requests to GitHub Discussions" so I'd suggest in the service of the community and also to avoid duplicates that the original issue should be re-opened, please.