While Loop wont calcuate my harmonic mean?

I dont see any reason why my program wont calculate the harmonic mean of the inputed numbers. The formula for the harmonic mean is ((N)/((1/x1)+(1/x2)...+(1/xn)))

Here's what i got:

total=0;

cnt=0;

x=1;

while x~=0

    x=input('Please input a positive number(0 to quit):');
    if x<0
        break; 
    end
    if x==0
        break; 
    end
    cnt=cnt+1;
    total=(1/total) + (1/x);

end

hmean=cnt/total;

if x<0

     fprintf('Error - Negative Inputs Entered, Program Terminated')
else
    fprintf('\nThe harmonic mean is %g',hmean)
end

Answer 1

[Matt Tearle]

total starts at 0, but then you have total=(1/total)+... That line should be total = total + (...) anyway.

BTW, I'm assuming you just can't use harmmean (from Statistics Toolbox)

As an aside, why not clean up the logic in the while loop by doing

if x>0
  <calculate mean>
end

It will break out of the loop when x==0 anyway (so you don't really need the break).

[Walter Roberson]

The while x=~0 is redundant and can be replaced with

while true

[John]

Thanks to both of you!

[Matt Tearle]

Just to clarify, Walter's suggestion works *if* you keep the "break"s you currently have. If you do what I said (get rid of the "break"s and use "if x>0..." instead, then don't change to "while true". That would be bad!