Question

I have:

(def data [[1 3 4 7 9] [7 6 3 2 7] [1 9 8 6 2]])

I want to average these (element-wise to get):

[3 6 5 5 6]

Like you would in MATLAB:

mean([1 3 4 7 9; 7 6 3 2 7; 1 9 8 6 2])

With Incanter I can do:

(map #(/ % (count m)) (apply plus data))

If data is rather large (and I have lots of them) is there a better way to do this?
Does it help to calculate the (count m) beforehand?
Does it help to defn the #(/ % (count m)) beforehand?

Answer 1

Without knowing how to use any of incanter, here’s how you could do this “from scratch”.

(let [data [[1 3 4 7 9] [7 6 3 2 7] [1 9 8 6 2]]
      num (count data)]
  (apply map (fn [& items]
               (/ (apply + items) num))
         data))

;=> (3 6 5 5 6)