如何使SUMMED mySQL值最接近现有值？

Question

Two tables in MySQL database...

• players (playerid, teamid, position, firstname, lastname)
• stats (statsid, playerid, points, year)

Let's say my baseline player has 83 points (ie the "existing value").

I want to find the ONE player from the database that has the closest point total to 83.

NOTE: This existing question is similar but doesn't involve SUMMING: Select closest numerical value with MySQL query

So this general method would work...

select   points,
         abs(points - 83) as distance_from_test
from     stats
order by distance_from_test
limit 1

But my issue is that there are multiple "points" entries for each player in a same year. So I want to SUM all point totals for each player first and THEN find the closest total to 83. This doesn't work, but this is basically what I want to do...

select   SUM(points) as totalpoints,
         abs(totalpoints - 83) as distance_from_test
from     stats
order by distance_from_test
limit 1

When I try that I get "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '' (T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE), expecting identifier (T_STRING) or variable (T_VARIABLE) or number (T_NUM_STRING)" so I'm assuming maybe you can't do this type of summing along with the abs math function. Can anyone confirm/deny that and point me in a smarter direction?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to GROUP BY player and you must use the calculation instead of the alias:

select   player,
         SUM(points) as totalpoints,
         abs(SUM(points) - 83) as distance_from_test
from     stats
GROUP BY player
order by distance_from_test
limit 1