In SQL, how can you "group by" in ranges?

Question

Suppose I have a table with a numeric column (lets call it "score").

I'd like to generate a table of counts, that shows how many times scores appeared in each range.

For example:

score range  | number of occurrences
-------------------------------------
   0-9       |        11
  10-19      |        14
  20-29      |         3
   ...       |       ...

In this example there were 11 rows with scores in the range of 0 to 9, 14 rows with scores in the range of 10 to 19, and 3 rows with scores in the range 20-29.

Is there an easy way to set this up? What do you recommend?

Answer 1

create table scores (
   user_id int,
   score int
)

select t.range as [score range], count(*) as [number of occurences]
from (
      select user_id,
         case when score >= 0 and score < 10 then '0-9'
         case when score >= 10 and score < 20 then '10-19'
         ...
         else '90-99' as range
     from scores) t
group by t.range

Answer 2

select cast(score/10 as varchar) + '-' + cast(score/10+9 as varchar), 
       count(*)
from scores
group by score/10

Answer 3

In postgres (where || is the string concatenation operator):

select (score/10)*10 || '-' || (score/10)*10+9 as scorerange, count(*)
from scores
group by score/10
order by 1

gives:

 scorerange | count 
------------+-------
 0-9        |    11
 10-19      |    14
 20-29      |     3
 30-39      |     2

Answer 4

Perhaps you're asking about keeping such things going...

Of course you'll invoke a full table scan for the queries and if the table containing the scores that need to be tallied (aggregations) is large you might want a better performing solution, you can create a secondary table and use rules, such as on insert - you might look into it.

Not all RDBMS engines have rules, though!

Answer 5

declare @RangeWidth int

set @RangeWidth = 10

select
   Floor(Score/@RangeWidth) as LowerBound,
   Floor(Score/@RangeWidth)+@RangeWidth as UpperBound,
   Count(*)
From
   ScoreTable
group by
   Floor(Score/@RangeWidth)

Answer 6

I see answers here that won't work in SQL Server's syntax. I would use:

select t.range as [score range], count(*) as [number of occurences]
from (
  select case 
    when score between  0 and  9 then ' 0-9 '
    when score between 10 and 19 then '10-19'
    when score between 20 and 29 then '20-29'
    ...
    else '90-99' end as range
  from scores) t
group by t.range

EDIT: see comments

Answer 7

James Curran's answer was the most concise in my opinion, but the output wasn't correct. For SQL Server the simplest statement is as follows:

SELECT 
    [score range] = CAST((Score/10)*10 AS VARCHAR) + ' - ' + CAST((Score/10)*10+9 AS VARCHAR), 
    [number of occurrences] = COUNT(*)
FROM #Scores
GROUP BY Score/10
ORDER BY Score/10

This assumes a #Scores temporary table I used to test it, I just populated 100 rows with random number between 0 and 99.

Answer 8

Neither of the highest voted answers are correct on SQLServer 2000. Perhaps they were using a different version.

Here are the correct versions of both of them on SQLServer 2000.

select t.range as [score range], count(*) as [number of occurences]
from (
  select case  
    when score between 0 and 9 then ' 0- 9'
    when score between 10 and 19 then '10-19'
    else '20-99' end as range
  from scores) t
group by t.range

or

select t.range as [score range], count(*) as [number of occurences]
from (
      select user_id,
         case when score >= 0 and score< 10 then '0-9'
         when score >= 10 and score< 20 then '10-19'
         else '20-99' end as range
     from scores) t
group by t.range

Answer 9

An alternative approach would involve storing the ranges in a table, instead of embedding them in the query. You would end up with a table, call it Ranges, that looks like this:

LowerLimit   UpperLimit   Range 
0              9          '0-9'
10            19          '10-19'
20            29          '20-29'
30            39          '30-39'

And a query that looks like this:

Select
   Range as [Score Range],
   Count(*) as [Number of Occurences]
from
   Ranges r inner join Scores s on s.Score between r.LowerLimit and r.UpperLimit
group by Range

This does mean setting up a table, but it would be easy to maintain when the desired ranges change. No code changes necessary!