How to calculate median monthly from date of month table? - sql

Question

My dataset:
Date Num_orders
Mar 21 2019 69
Mar 22 2019 82
Mar 24 2019 312
Mar 25 2019 199
Mar 26 2019 2,629
Mar 27 2019 2,819
Mar 28 2019 3,123
Mar 29 2019 3,332
Mar 30 2019 1,863
Mar 31 2019 1,097
Apr 01 2019 1,578
Apr 02 2019 2,353
Apr 03 2019 2,768
Apr 04 2019 2,648
Apr 05 2019 3,192
Apr 06 2019 2,363
Apr 07 2019 1,578
Apr 08 2019 3,090
Apr 09 2019 3,814
Apr 10 2019 3,836
...
I need to calculate the monthly median number of orders from days of the same month:
The desired results:
Month Median_monthly
Mar 2019 1,863
Apr 2019 2,768
May 2019 2,876
Jun 2019 ...
...
I tried to use function date_trunc to extract month from the dataset then group by 'month' but it didn't work out. Thanks for your help, I use Google Bigquery (#standard) environment!

Answer 1

Probably you tried to use PERCENTILE_CONT which can not be used with GROUP BY:
Try to use APPROX_QUANTILES(x, 100)[OFFSET(50)]. It should work with GROUP BY.
SELECT APPROX_QUANTILES](Num_orders, 100)\[OFFSET(50)\] AS median
FROM myTable
GROUP BY Month
Alternativele you can use PERCENTILE_CONT within subquery:
SELECT
DISTINCT Month, median
FROM (
SELECT
Month,
PERCENTILE_CONT(Num_orders, 0.5) OVER(PARTITION BY Month) AS median
FROM myTable
)

Answer 2

This would often be done using DISTINCT:
SELECT DISTINCT DATE_TRUNC(month, date),
PERCENTILE_CONT(Num_orders, 0.5) OVER (PARTITION BY DATE_TRUNC(month, date) AS median
FROM myTable;
Note: There are two percentile functions, PERCENTILE_CONT() and PERCENTILE_DISC(). They have different results when there is a "tie" in the middle of the data.