PEP 450 Adding a statistics module to Python

[Roy Smith]

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
> >> installing numpy or scipy is generally no more difficult
> >> that executing "pip install (scipy|numpy)"

I described the problems I had trying to follow that advice.

In article <mailman.425.1376137459.1251.python-list at python.org>,
 Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin at gmail.com> wrote:

> You should use apt-get for numpy/scipy on Ubuntu. Although
> unfortunately IIRC this doesn't work as well as it should since Ubuntu
> doesn't install the appropriate BLAS/LAPACK libraries by default
> (leaving you with numpy's fallback libraries).

That really kind of proves my point.  It's *not* easy to install.  
Theres' a choice of methods, some of which work in some environments, 
some of which work in others.  And even if apt-get is the preferred 
install method on Ubuntu, it's a method which is unavailable to people 
without root access (and may be undesirable if you rely on virtualenv to 
keep multiple projects cleanly separated).

And, what happens if you don't have the right libraries?  Do you end up 
with an install which is missing some functionality, or one where all 
the calls work, but they're slower, or numerically unstable, or what?

All these questions go away if it's packaged with the standard library.

I'm not sure where the line should be drawn between "basic stuff that 
should be included" and "advanced stuff that you need an add-on to get", 
but certainly mean and std-dev should be in the default distribution.