Using Python for processing of large datasets (convincing managment)

[Alex Martelli]

Thomas Jensen wrote:
        ...
> One of the tasks of the program will be to calculate the standard
> deviation of rows of daily values (which are the result of another
> calculation, etc). I was planning on using lists and tuples like this:
>      [(date, value), (date, value), ...]
> How well will this perform i wonder? Since lists and tuples are Python
> structures, won't they still be "slow" to traverse?

If you have substantial numeric computations to perform on large
arrays, you're almost surely better off using the Numeric package
to extend Python, particularly if performance is an issue.


Alex