# average This command allows you to calculate the average of values in a column.  ## Examples 
To get the average of the file sizes in a directory, simply pipe the size column from the ls command to the sum command.

```shell
> ls | get size | average
━━━━━━━━━
 <value>
━━━━━━━━━
2282.727272727273
━━━━━━━━━
```

```shell
> pwd | split-row / | size | get chars | average
━━━━━━━━━
 <value>
━━━━━━━━━
5.250000000000000
━━━━━━━━━
```

Note that average only works for integer and byte values at the moment, and if the shell doesn't recognize the values in a column as one of those types, it will return an error.
One way to solve this is to convert each row to an integer and then pipe the result to `average`

```shell
> open tests/fixtures/formats/caco3_plastics.csv | get tariff_item | average
error: Unrecognized type in stream: Primitive(String("2509000000"))
- shell:1:0
1 | open tests/fixtures/formats/caco3_plastics.csv | get tariff_item | average
  | ^^^^ source
```

```shell
> open tests/fixtures/formats/caco3_plastics.csv | get tariff_item | str --to-int | average
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 <value>
───────────────────
 3239404444.000000
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```