[Python-ideas] Expanding statistical functions in Python's std. lib.

[David Townshend]

This had probably been thought about before, but why not include numpy in
stdlib?
On Sep 1, 2011 1:05 AM, "Robert Kern" <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/31/11 5:23 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Robert Kern<robert.kern at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>> On 8/31/11 2:05 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>>>
>>>> You didn't get any responses AFAICT. That doesn't mean nobody is
>>>> interested -- perhaps your proposal is simply too general? Do you feel
>>>> up to making some more specific recommendations about the exact list
>>>> of functions to add? It's easier to criticize a concrete proposal. Do
>>>> you feel up to producing a patch that just adds the incomplete beta
>>>> function?
>>>
>>> It shows up deeply mis-threaded under "Create a StringBuilder class and
use
>>> it everywhere" in my client. Perhaps Spectral One should try reposting
it so
>>> that it shows up as a new thread.
>>
>> What client is that?
>
> Thunderbird, via GMane, which may or may not be adding more confusion to
the mix.
>
>> In my GMail (for once) it shows up as a new
>> thread with subject "Re: [Python-ideas] Expanding statistical
>> functions in Python's std. lib." I guess your client got confused by
>> some of these headers:
>>
>> References: <549901314286114 at web119.yandex.ru>
>> <4E56E859.3090504 at canterbury.ac.nz>
>> In-Reply-To: <4E56E859.3090504 at canterbury.ac.nz>
>
> And indeed, it shows up threaded under Greg Ewing's Aug 25 post to the
> StringBuilder thread. Email threading is something of an art, but I'm not
sure
> it's right to say that my client is getting "confused" by taking the
In-Reply-To
> header at its word. ;-)
>
> Anyways, that's why I suspect he's not getting many responses. As to the
> substance of the proposal, I'm -0 on having the full complement of
statistical
> distribution functions and +0 on adding just the incomplete beta function.

> Personally, I will never use any of them since I can get them from scipy.
I am
> at least going to be using numpy to generate any of the test statistics
that I
> would pass through these functions. I don't see anything particularly
compelling
> about having them in the math module as opposed to a third party module
(be it
> scipy or something lighter-weight).
>
> That said, having a good complement of common special functions that can
be used
> to build up a variety of less-common functions is a good thing to have in
a
> standard library. I think you could defend adding the incomplete beta
function
> on that principle, if nothing else. You could make a similar argument for
the
> Bessel functions j0(), j1() and jn().
>
> --
> Robert Kern
>
> "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma
> that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it
had
> an underlying truth."
> -- Umberto Eco
>
> _______________________________________________
> Python-ideas mailing list
> Python-ideas at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/attachments/20110901/bc313daa/attachment.html>