[Numpy-discussion] Deprecation of financial routines

[Alan G Isaac]

On 8/19/2013 2:37 AM, Juan Luis Cano wrote:
> https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/2880
>
> it was suggested that we deprecate and eventually remove the financial
> functions in NumPy


It seems that this summary is a bit one-sided.  There was also
a suggestion to move these into numpy.financial, which is much
less disruptive.

I'm not arguing for either of those choices, but it seems to
me that the right way to bring this forward to to recall the
original motivation for having them and ask if that motivation
has fallen apart.  I believe that the original motivation for
providing the financial functions was to complete the sense
that Python users could turn to NumPy whenever they might
turn to a calculator:
http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2008-April/032422.html
Behind this, I believe, was a desire to draw new users to NumPy.

The request for simple financial functions does arise,
and people do get pointed to NumPy for this.  This seems to me
to be a benefit to the NumPy community, although a small one.

I'm getting the feeling that some of the opposition to the financial
functions is purely aesthetic. ("What are *these* doing here??")
It seems to me that a request for comments would be more useful if
it tried to lay out the perceived costs and benefits to this change.

One cost that has been clearly stated is namespace pollution.
That seems pretty small to me, but in any case would be fully
addressed by making these available as numpy.financial.

Alan Isaac