[Numpy-discussion] NA masks in the next numpy release?

[Benjamin Root]

2011/10/28 Stéfan van der Walt <stefan at sun.ac.za>

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Benjamin Root <ben.root at ou.edu> wrote:
> > this by making missing data front-and-center.  However, my belief is that
> > Mark's approach is easier to comprehend and is cleaner.  Cleaner features
> > means that it is more likely to be used.
>
> Cleaner features may be easier to adopt, but whether they are used or
> not depends on whether they address the problem in hand.  The
> implementation as it stands essentially gives us a faster and more
> integrated version of numpy.ma; but it has become clear from this
> conversation that such an approach overlooks a very common subset of
> masked-related problems.
>
>
Which are...? (given the history of this discussion, let's not assume
anything is clear).


> We should be  concerned about memory use; we often don't have too much
> of it, and accessing it is slow.
>
> Would it be workable to store 8 mask bits per byte instead?  I don't
> think it should impact on the speed much, and we can always generate a
> full mask for the user on request.
>
>
I suggested such an idea a while back.  This is part of the reason why Mark
decided that the masks should not be exposed for direct access in case it is
decided that masks could be implemented that way.  I have a vague
recollection of him commenting about some tests he did along that route, but
I don't remember it.

Cheers,
Ben Root
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