Techniques are disclosed for processing data streams containing data tuples, where some of the data tuples are load shed. Load shedding refers to a process of selectively discarding some data tuples, e.g., when the amount of received data becomes too overwhelming to manage. When operations are invoked that depend on the values (or count) of the load shed tuples, the value (or counts) of the load shed tuples may be used to perform such operations. For example, an aggregation operation may return the sum, average, mean and/or variance associated with a plurality of tuples processed by a node of the stream application.