Thread: a very primitive question about division

I have a very primitive question about division to which I can’t find an obvious answer in the documentation.

Given two values defined as integers, how do I divide one by the other and get an answer with two decimals, e.g 3 /4 = 0.75.

This is very simple in mysql and seems to be oddly contorted in postgres. I spent half an hour on the Web and with the documentation but couldn’t find a simple example.

Probably my stupidity.

Thanks.  So  round(before1550/colfreq::numeric, 2)  produces the desired result. 

The explanations and examples of string functions in the Postgres documentation are a model of clarity. The explanations and examples of basic arithmetic operations  are not.  There is room for improvement there.

In Table 9.5  the division of 9 by 4 is indeed described clearly. But there is no example of 4/9 and the different ways of formatting it as a decimal fraction with different options for rounding or a percentage.  Two or three added examples would make life easier for folks who have not progressed much beyond 8^th grade math.

I see the logic of that, but I also think that this is not how many users think when they want to know how to get results for 4/9.  Note that division is a great stumbling block in middle school.  They want to know how to divide four by nine and don’t want to think about division and formatting as separate operations to be looked up in separate chapters. Perhaps they should think that way, but they don’t, and as Adenauer, modern Germany’s first chancellor,  observed: you have to take people as they come because there are no others.

At the least the table 9.5 in 9.3  could have an NB about the problem of decimals in division, together with an example of how to do 4/9 in different formats, and a reference to the fuller discussion.