[Python-ideas] Pre-PEP: adding a statistics module to Python

[Ethan Furman]

On 08/07/2013 03:20 PM, David Mertz wrote:
>
> Here's a question for the actual statisticians on the list (I'm not close to this).  Would having a look-ahead window of
> moderate size (probably configurable) do enough good in numeric accuracy to be worthwhile?  Obviously, creating
> pathological cases is still possible, but in the "normal" situation, does this matter enough?  I.e. if the function were
> to read 100 numbers from an iterator, perform some manipulation on their ordering or scaling, produce that better
> intermediate result, then do the same with the next chunk of 100 numbers, is this enough of a win to have as an option?

I have a follow-up question:  considering the built-in error when calculating statistics, is the difference between 
sequence and iterator significant?  Would we be just as well served with `it = iter(sequence)` and always using the 
one-pass algorithm?

--
~Ethan~