Calculating Averages: Weight collected in a day for entire year...

saintuk

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May 24, 2018
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I'm suffering from number blindness, or confidence in the figures I'm producing and need some help, please.

I'm looking to calculate some averages for waste collection figures.

What I have;

Weight collected in a day for entire year - 1,967,660 Kg (w)
Number of properties collected from in that day - 6222 (pd)
Number of properties within a collection route, within that day - there are 6 routes of which the route I'm using has 1208 properties (pr)
Route size as % of day - 6222 / 1208 (rp)
Number of collection visits across the year. - 26 No. (v)

For example purposes, let's use Monday.

Deal with the easy stuff first.

Average collection weight for a Monday property is; w / (pd*v)

I'm doubting myself when it comes to the route figures, do I use....


(w*rp) / (pr*26)

or

((w/26)*rp) / pr

or is there another way?
 
Hi saintuk,

Let's deal with known issues first, and then proceed from there:

Weight collected in a day for entire year - 1,967,660 Kg (w)

What does "weight collected in a day for entire year" mean? Is this the weight of trash collected in one day, or in a whole year? If it's the weight collected in one day, is it the daily weight averaged over one year? Is it the for weight all routes, or just the one you are dealing with?

Route size as % of day - 6222 / 1208 (rp)

No...a percentage is a fraction, just expressed out of 100 instead of out of a whole (1). So the percentage has to be the smaller number divided by the larger number. You're asking what fraction of all properties your particular route includes:

percentage = (1208/6222)*100 = 0.1941 * 100 = 19.41% of properties are on this route

Number of collection visits across the year. - 26 No. (v)

I'm sorry, but what does the above number mean?

Clarify these things and then we can move on to what you are actually trying to calculate.
 
Hi,

Yes, waste is trash - I'm in the UK so we do speak a little differently across here.

The weight figure, using Monday as an example, is the total weight collected on a Monday for a particular type of trash for the entire calendar year.

Yeah, I put the figures round the wrong way for calculating the % - I realised this but was unable to edit while I waited for first post to be approved.

The 26 Number, this represents the number of times a collection is carried out. The collection is on a 2 week cycle, Monday is therefore collected 26 times over a 52 week period.

So, the weight collected over an entire year, on a Monday, is from 6222 * 26 households. Of the 6222 households in a Monday collection cycle, one route is 1208 properties.

Thank you.
 

Word of warning. An average of averages is unlikely to be what you want.
 
To put it simply;

I want to find the average weight of "trash" collected from a property across a year within a defined area. I know the total weight collected in a day, I know how many properties are collected from in that day. To collect from these properties, on that day, it takes 6 vehicles, each vehicle has a route of a certain number of properties.

For example.
Vehicle 1 - 1200
Vehicle 2 - 1000
Vehicle 3 - 900
Vehicle 4 - 700
Vehicle 5 - 200
Vehicle 6 - 200

Knowing the total weight collected from all these properties in a year, from 26 visits as it's a fortnight cycle, I want to work out the average yield for each vehicle route.
 
Hi,

Yes, waste is trash - I'm in the UK so we do speak a little differently across here.

Lol no worries. I understood in the first place that waste meant trash. I didn't even realize I used a different word from you when posing the question. I was not asking that at all. I was only asking for clarification on whether the weight figure was per day or per year, and you have provided that below:

The weight figure, using Monday as an example, is the total weight collected on a Monday for a particular type of trash for the entire calendar year.

Okay so this is the total weight collected on Mondays for the whole year? It's not the average daily weight collected.

The 26 Number, this represents the number of times a collection is carried out. The collection is on a 2 week cycle, Monday is therefore collected 26 times over a 52 week period.

So, the weight collected over an entire year, on a Monday, is from 6222 * 26 households. Of the 6222 households in a Monday collection cycle, one route is 1208 properties.

Thank you.

To clarify: there are only 6222 households whose collection day is Monday, right? There are 6222*26 collections from those households in the course of one year. But it's not correct to say that there are 6222*26 households, is it?

So yes, your first formula checks out. The average weight in a single collection for a Monday household would be the total weight divided by the total number of collections in the year.

Total weight = w = 1,967,660 kg

Total number of collections = (number of households) * (number of visits per household) = pd*v = 6222*26

So the average weight per collection for a Monday household is w/(pd*v) = (1,967,660 kg)/(6222*26) = 12.163 kg

That seems like a plausible mass of waste for a household to accumulate in two weeks.

As for the other equations, I'll echo the others in saying that it's just not clear what you are trying to do. Is it possible for you to state clearly in words what question about the specific route it is that you are trying to answer?


 
Thanks again for reply.

So, the average per household is = 12.163kg based on the number of households in Monday (6222) and the weight collected over the year on Mondays (1967660).

What I now want to find is the average weight collected by collection route. 6222 is the total households, made up of a number of vehicle routes - these vehicle routes do not have an equal sized number of properties.

As said, if 12.163kg is the average for 6222 properties, how then is the average for each of the routes making up Monday's 6222 households worked out? If a route is 25% of the total number of properties on Monday, is their average weight greater than the 6222 average or is it just the same ? Is there a way to say whether a smaller or larger route gathers more waste?

Vehicle One - 1200 properties generate an average of **.**kg of waste

Vehicle Six - 200 properties generate an average of **.**kg of waste.
 
Thanks again for reply.

So, the average per household is = 12.163kg based on the number of households in Monday (6222) and the weight collected over the year on Mondays (1967660).

What I now want to find is the average weight collected by collection route. 6222 is the total households, made up of a number of vehicle routes - these vehicle routes do not have an equal sized number of properties.

As said, if 12.163kg is the average for 6222 properties, how then is the average for each of the routes making up Monday's 6222 households worked out? If a route is 25% of the total number of properties on Monday, is their average weight greater than the 6222 average or is it just the same ? Is there a way to say whether a smaller or larger route gathers more waste?

Vehicle One - 1200 properties generate an average of **.**kg of waste

Vehicle Six - 200 properties generate an average of **.**kg of waste.

Average weight PER household PER collection will be the same using the given data.

If you had different yearly totals for each of the routes, you could compute separate averages for each route, in addition to the overall average, and see if there was evidence for different routes having larger or smaller collections per household, on average.
 
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