[issue20561] Decimal handling error in statistics module
Wolfgang Maier
report at bugs.python.org
Sat Feb 8 12:10:27 CET 2014
New submission from Wolfgang Maier:
Can this still be fixed in 3.4 ??
I came across this bug in the statistics module today:
>>> import statistics
>>> data = [Decimal('1e4')]
>>> statistics.mean(data)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#465>", line 1, in <module>
statistics.mean(data)
File "C:/Python33\statistics.py", line 316, in mean
return _sum(data)/n
File "C:/Python33\statistics.py", line 167, in _sum
total += Fraction(n, d)
File "C:\Python33\lib\fractions.py", line 163, in __new__
raise TypeError("both arguments should be "
TypeError: both arguments should be Rational instances
The reason for this is that the statistics module converts Decimals to exact ratios internally like this:
def _decimal_to_ratio(d):
"""Convert Decimal d to exact integer ratio (numerator, denominator).
>>> from decimal import Decimal
>>> _decimal_to_ratio(Decimal("2.6"))
(26, 10)
"""
sign, digits, exp = d.as_tuple()
if exp in ('F', 'n', 'N'): # INF, NAN, sNAN
assert not d.is_finite()
raise ValueError
num = 0
for digit in digits:
num = num*10 + digit
if sign:
num = -num
den = 10**-exp
#if type(den) != int:
# print (d, sign, digits, exp, num, den)
return (num, den)
The important part here is the line:
den = 10**-exp
which makes den an int if - and **only** if - exp is negative.
However, the exponent in the namedtuple returned by Decimal.as_tuple() is not guaranteed to be negative and in fact:
>>>Decimal('1e4').as_tuple()
DecimalTuple(sign=0, digits=(1,), exponent=4)
With this den in the above function becomes a float, which raises an error subsequently in _sum, when it essentially tries to do:
Fraction(num, den)
IMPORTANT: I have been running this example on my laptop with Python3.3.0 and the statistics module imported from sys.path.
Thus, I cannot exclude that the decimal module has changed since 3.3.0 and is now always returning a negative exponent with
.as_tuple(). I'm abroad and cannot verify this against the Python3.4dev build.
Could somebody confirm this for 3.4 and reject this issue immediately if the error doesn't occur ?
If this is not version dependent though, then there is a very simple bug-fix for it, which I suggest should still be incorporated into 3.4:
if exp >= 0:
return int(x), 1
inserted right after the raise ValueError line is doing the job.
I cannot generate the diff for this myself, so could somebody do this.
Thanks a lot for your efforts!
----------
messages: 210613
nosy: oscarbenjamin, python-dev, skrah, stevenjd, wolma
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Decimal handling error in statistics module
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.4
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<http://bugs.python.org/issue20561>
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