Question

I have created a list of timedelta objects and i need to get the average of this list. when i try to do

return (sum(delta_list)/(len(delta_list)-1))

i get

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'datetime.timedelta'

I am new at working with python’s datetime classes. I also would like to know how to get this average into a format like days: hours: mins: i don’t need anything smaller than mins.

Answer 1

sum wants a starting value, which is 0 by default, but 0 can’t be added to a timedelta so you get the error.

You just have to give sum a timedelta() as the start value:

# this is the average
return sum(delta_list, timedelta()) / len(delta_list)

To print it out you can do this:

print str(some_delta)

If you want something customized you can get some_delta.days and some_delta.seconds but you have to calculate everything between.