Performing arithmetic in SQL query

Question

So I'm working on a script that awards "trophies" to the top 4 performers of a game. The table logs each "grab" attempt, the user that performed it, and whether it was successful. I'd like to create a script that is able to pull the top four off of percentage of successful grabs (attempts / successes)

Is something like this possible within the query itself using mysqli?

I have successfully accomplished the code already by just looping through each table entry, but with thousands of attempts per month it just seems like a clunky way to go about it.

Here is an example of a row in the table, I am attempting to grab the top four based off of monthlyTries / monthlySuccessful

 id  userId   PetId   PalId  tries  successfulGrabs monthlyTries   MonthlySuccessful
 5   44550    84564   3967    825      268             120               37

Answer 1

Assuming you have a success column that's either 1 or 0 you can sum the success and divide that by count(*) which is the total # of attempts

select user_id, sum(success)/count(*) percentage
from attempts a
group by user_id
order by percentage desc
limit 4

If the success column is not a 1/0 value you can use conditional aggregation

select user_id, sum(case when success = 'yes' then 1 else 0 end)/count(*) as percentage
from attempts a
group by user_id
order by percentage desc
limit 4

Answer 2

In MySQL, you can simplify the logic. If success takes on the values 0 and 1:

select a.user_id, avg(success) as percentage
from attempts a
group by a.user_id
order by percentage desc
limit 4;

Otherwise:

select a.user_id, avg(success = 'yes') as percentage
from attempts a
group by a.user_id
order by percentage desc
limit 4;