I was wondering how to calculate the average of a series of times for a project I’m working on. In fact, it’s quiet simple.
Here’s how I did it.
Imagine you have 4 times you want to know the average of.
08:30:56 – 08:45:12 – 09:32:28 – 10:20:07
You can calculate an average by adding the different values and divide those by the amount of added values. In this case, since we’re working with times, simply adding the values won’t work. To do this I first convert each time into seconds:
08 * 3600 + 30 * 60 + 56 = 28800 + 1800 + 56 = 30656 seconds
08 *3600 + 45 * 60 + 12 = 28800 + 2700 + 12 = 31512 seconds
09*3600 + 32*60 + 28 = 32400 + 1920 + 28 = 34348 seconds
10*3600 + 20*60 + 07 = 36000 + 1200 + 7 = 37207 seconds
Now we add those results together and divide it by the amount of times, 4 in this case.
(30656 + 31512 + 34348 + 37207) / 4 = 33430,75 seconds
Now we convert this result back to hours, minutes and seconds
First the hours
33430,75 / 3600 = 9.286 (9 hours + 0.286 hours)
Then the minutes
0.286h * 3600 = 1029.6 seconds
1029.6/60 = 17.16 (17 minutes + 0,16 minutes)
And finally the seconds
0.16 * 60 = 9.6 seconds or ~10 seconds
So, the result is 9:17:10. I thinks it’s right, nevertheless, if I made mistakes or if you know a better solution thanks to let me know.
