Question

I have a table that looks something like this:

 word        big   expensive   smart   fast  dog         9     -10         -20     4 professor   2     4           40      -7 ferrari     7     50          0       48 alaska      10    0           1       0 gnat        -3    0           0       0 

The + and – values are associated with the word, so professor is smart and dog is not smart. Alaska is big, as a proportion of the total value associated with its entries, and the opposite is true of gnat.

Is there a good way to get the absolute value of the number farthest from zero, and some token whether absolute value =/= value? Relatedly, how might I calculate whether the results for a given value are proportionately large with respect to the other values? I would write something to format the output to the effect of: ‘dog: not smart, probably not expensive; professor smart; ferrari: fast, expensive; alaska: big; gnat: probably small.’ (The formatting is not a question, just an illustration, I am stuck on the underlying queries.)

Also, the rest of the program is python, so if there is any python solution with normal dbapi modules or a more abstract module, any help appreciated.

Answer 1

abs value fartherest from zero:

select max(abs(mycol)) from mytbl 

will be zero if the value is negative:

select n+abs(mycol)   from zzz  where abs(mycol)=(select max(abs(mycol)) from mytbl);