totalizing

Totalizing is the act or process of producing a total by adding together components or partial sums. In mathematics and data processing, totalization refers to aggregation where individual values are summed to produce a single total, such as calculating column sums or generating overall totals from a dataset.

Industrial metrology and instrumentation rely on totalizers, devices that continuously accumulate a running total of a measured quantity. Electric meters, gas meters, and water-flow meters may incorporate totalizers to display or log the total consumption over time, while separate totalizers can provide periodic totals (e.g., daily, monthly) and grand totals.

Manufacturing and logistics use totalizing counters to tally produced units, passed inspections, or inventory movements, feeding into productivity reports and billing cycles. In computing and information systems, totalization is supported by aggregation operations such as SQL's SUM, spreadsheet SUM, and data-warehousing ETL steps that compute totals across data partitions. It is a common feature in programming languages and analysis tools, enabling fast calculation of totals without reprocessing raw data.

Totalization also appears in international social security policy. A totalization agreement coordinates the social security credits earned in two countries, allowing a person to qualify for benefits by combining periods of coverage rather than relying on a single nation's records.

Related terms include totalizer (the device that performs or displays the running total), aggregation, and summation.