Calculating average with AVG for a list of numbers

This is probably a newbie question (bear with me) but how can I calculate the average for a list of numbers using SQL and the AVG function? I mean, I can add together numbers in SQL
like:

SELECT 2+3+4

How can I calculate the average of 2, 3 and 4 without inserting them to a table first?

I have tried different kinds of variations like:

SELECT 2 AS foo UNION 3 AS foo UNION 4 AS foo
  foo
  integer
1 2
2 3
3 4

but:

SELECT AVG(SELECT 2 AS foo UNION 3 AS foo UNION 4 AS foo)

ERROR: syntax error at or near "select"

I just can't seem to find the right syntax. I'm on PostgreSQL at the moment if it matters.

The best solution depends on where and in what form the values come from.

unnest()

Use the set returning function unnest() with an array in the FROM clause. That's shortest for long lists, but it's a Postgres specific solution.

SELECT avg(n) FROM unnest('{2,3,4}'::int[]) n;

Which is short syntax for:

SELECT avg(n) FROM unnest('{2,3,4}'::int[]) AS n(n);

VALUES

Alternatively, use a VALUES expression as subquery. This is standard SQL.

SELECT avg(n)
FROM  (VALUES (2),(3),(4)) t(n);

UNION ALL

You can do the same with a much more verbose chain of SELECT ... UNION ALL SELECT .... Also standard SQL.

SELECT avg(n)
FROM  (
   SELECT 2 
   UNION ALL
   SELECT 3
   UNION ALL
   SELECT 4
   ) t(n);

Use UNION ALL, not just UNION, which would fold duplicates (which you did not specify!) and is therefore also considerably more expensive.

SQL Fiddle.

Note that all numeric literals in the example are cast to integer automatically (just digits). For other data types you may have to add explicit type casts. avg() returns (per documentation):


numeric for any integer-type argument, double precision for a
floating-point argument, otherwise the same as the argument data type

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#77005, answer score: 7