Victor’s Programming Aid

Calculating the Average from a List of numbers is accomplished through this easy function. The average is the sum of all values in a list divided by the total number of values. In this average example, we will assume the List consists of doubles (by means of a Generic List). For this to workOur Generic List is defined below:

List<double> myGenericDoubleList = new List<double>();
myGenericDoubleList.Add(5.2);
myGenericDoubleList.Add(8.4);
myGenericDoubleList.Add(435);
myGenericDoubleList.Add(76.9);
myGenericDoubleList.Add(3256.1);
myGenericDoubleList.Add(-85.2);

Now that we have defined our Generic Double List, we need to define our average function. Our function will take in a list of double values (the one we previously defined as myGenericDoubleList) and return a double value (which is our final double value). The average function reads in all double values and adds the value to a running sum. Finally, we divide the running sum by the total number of items in the list.

private double getAverage(List<double> doubleList)
{
    double total = 0;
    foreach (double value in doubleList)
    {
        total += value;
    }
    double average = total / doubleList.Count;
    return average;
}

Now that the function is ready to be used, we simply need to call the average function. An example is provided below:

double finalAverage = getAverage(myGenericDoubleList);

And there you have our complete example. Also important to know is a function has been provided out of the box with .NET Framework 3.5 that calculates the average of a list. To access this function, you be required to have a Generic List of double.

double finalDouble = myGenericDoubleList.Average()