The English Oracle

Aggregate or summary?

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Chapters
00:00 Aggregate Or Summary?
00:22 Accepted Answer Score 7
00:59 Thank you

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ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 7


You cannot use summary here because it means something else. Other than that, it's mostly down to preference.

Although aggregate is technically correct, I would only use it when describing the size of a new file created by merging the two original files - not the result of summing up the two original sizes. I would also prefer using a narrower term (for example, aggregate functions include not only sum but also count, average and more).

I normally label the result of summing up several values as total. When referring to the total in a sentence, you could also use speak of the combined size of the two files.