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Typical errors at solution of exercises. Exercise 53

To within two decimal digits, define the average amount of guns for the battleship classes.

I supposed there is only one problem in this task, and that is rounding. But recently I received the following solution:

SELECT SUM( sum_g )/SUM( count_g ) FROM
   (SELECT SUM( numGuns ) AS sum_g , COUNT(*) AS count_g
       FROM Classes INNER JOIN Ships ON Classes.class = Ships.class
       WHERE type='bb'
    UNION
    SELECT SUM( numGuns ) AS sum_g , COUNT(*) AS count_g
       FROM Classes INNER JOIN Outcomes ON Classes.class = Outcomes.ship
       WHERE type='bb') AS a

It's very rich for mistakes analysis J . Let's start from the rounding. The number of guns is an integer (according to the column type, not to the logic!). That's why the sum itself will be a whole number. When dividing integers in SQL Server we always get an integer. And the result is achieved not by rounding but by DISCARDING the fractional part. For example, execute the following query:

SELECT 2/3

The result will be 0, and that confirms what we've said. So, to make cosmetic improvements of this query, at least one operand should be converted to real type. As I've written in the Help at www.sql-ex.ru site, you can use implicit type conversion:

SELECT SUM( sum_g )*1.0/SUM( count_g )

that is, when multiplying by a real unity the numerator becomes a real number itself.

Now, as we need to count the average by classes, at first, we shouldn't take ships into account and, second, we don't need to remember ships from the Outcomes table.

But for analyzing the mistakes let's consider the solution in its author's interpretation, that is, we'll define the average value by all linear ships from the database, and this turns out to be task 54. I've discussed that task but with another mistake.

So, the number of guns and amount are counted separately by ships from the Ships table and by the head ships from the Outcomes table. Then, in the main query we summarize the number of guns and the amount of ships by every table and divide the first by second to get the average value.

Let's discuss an example. Let there be 2 ships with 11 and 8 guns in the Ships table, and 1 ship with 11 guns in the Outcomes table. So we get 3 ships with 30 guns. The average value is 30/3=10. Is this correct? No, that is, it's correct only for certain cases, while we need to write a query that will be correct for any data. I see several examples to prove this.

First. What if there is no head ship that corresponds to the terms of the task in the Outcomes table? Then the second query will return: 0 ships, the number of guns is NULL. As a result of calculating the average we'll get

(19 + NULL)/(2+0) = NULL

instead of 10.

Second. Let the head ship of ‘bb' class be both in the Ships and the Outcomes table, that means, it's the same ship. Then we should get 19/2 but not 30/3 as the solution presents.

Third. But what if in the previous situation on the ships the head vessel took part in battles twice? Then we'll get (19 + 22) /( 2 + 2) instead of our 19/2.

Fourth… Think of it yourself. That's how the checking base on the site is formed J .

» Given examples here can be done directly on the website by selecting the check box “Without checking” on the page with SELECT exercises.

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