Alteryx summarize tool median gives wrong number

I have discovered this bug while at work and I'm not allowed to upload anything from my work PC.

median gives wrong number when nulls are involved (or maybe more)

I had large dataset at work with 100,000 records, a bunch of dates (date) and a numeric field (percentage)

when validating the results of the summarize tool (group by date, median percentage) I saw that it gives the wrong number for many of the dates

upon further investigation this seems to happen on my older version of alteryx but still why wud this happen?

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Bug

Accepted answers

All comments

cjaneczko

What if you change the Nulls to 0's and then use the Median - Ignore 0's option in the summarize tool?

alexnajm

It's hard to tell with the screenshots what's going on - if you can paste your data before and after (since you can't post the workflow) that'd be helpful!

Otherwise @cjaneczko 's suggestion is good to try!

Alder

ignore 0 works, but thats just like putting duct tape on it

cjaneczko

Without seeing the dataset its hard to diagnose the issue.

alexnajm

I would disagree with that slightly @Alder - Alteryx is just giving you multiple median options depending on your data!

Alder

Original Data:

RecordID	date	percentage
1	2024-05-02	[Null]
2	2024-10-31	402.761161

After Group By date, Median percentage:

date	Median_percentage
2024-05-02	402.761161
2024-10-31	402.761161

After Group By RecordID, Median percentage:

RecordID	Median_percentage
1	[Null]
2	402.761161

The first result is clearly just wrong, make your own text input and try it out. (Make sure date is Date data type and percentage is Double)

I think at work I had AMP turned on, forgot to try it with AMP turned off. But we tested out the same workflow on three different PCs, two PCs (with an older version of Alteryx) had the wrong result. Not sure if it's because of the version or something else like AMP

alexnajm

I am not seeing the same behavior (version 2024.2)

Screenshot 2025-05-12 105029.png

Alteryx summarize tool median gives wrong number.yxmd

Alder

The 2022 version ones from work got wrong results.

But the 2025 version got it correct.

Can you try with and without AMP? also make sure date is Date, because it works if its a string but not if its a date for me

alexnajm

AMP doesn't affect it, and Date is a date data type

cjaneczko

I have tested the above as well and get the desired results. You should look into upgrading the versions. This could have been a bug in the past that was patched.

Alder

I tested it with and without AMP first thing at work today.

AMP off = correct result

AMP on = wrong result

mine is version 2022.1.1.40869

the colleagues with an older version like mine have the same result as I do.

the colleagues with a newer version have correct results with both AMP on and off

finally found the culprit

thanks people

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