[Numpy-discussion] Re: sum and mean methods behaviour
Peter Verveer
verveer at embl-heidelberg.de
Thu Sep 4 04:26:04 EDT 2003
Hi all,
I was thinking a bit more about the changes to reduce() that Todd proposed,
and have some questions:
The problem that the output may not be able to hold the result of an operation
is not unique to the reduce() method. For instance adding two arrays of type
UInt can also give you the wrong answer:
>>> array(255, UInt8) + array(255, UInt8)
254
So, if this is a general problem, why should only the reduce method be
enhanced to avoid this? If you implement this, should this capability not be
supported more broadly than only by reduce(), for instance by universal
functons such as 'add'? Would it not be unexpected for users that only
reduce() provides such added functionality?
However, as Paul Dubois pointed out earlier, the original design philosphy of
Numeric/numarray was to let the user deal with such problems himself and keep
the package small and fast. This seems actually a sound decision, so would it
not be better to avoid complicating numarray with these type of changes and
also leave reduce as it is?
Personally I don't have a need for the proposed changes to the reduce
function. My original complaint that started the whole discussion was that
the mean() and sum() array methods did not give the correct result in some
cases. I still think they should return a correct double precision value,
even if the universal functions may not. That could be achieved by a separate
implementation that does not use the universal functions. I would be prepared
to provide that implementation either to replace the mean and sum methods, or
as a separate add-on.
Cheers, Peter
> 1. Add a type parameter to sum which defaults to widest type.
>
> 2. Add a type parameter to reductions (and fix output type handling).
> Default is same-type as it is now. No major changes to C-code.
>
> 3. Add a WidestType(array) function:
>
> Bool --> Bool
> Int8,Int16,Int32,Int64 --> Int64
> UInt8, UInt16,UInt32,UInt64 --> UInt64 (Int64 on win32)
> Float32, Float64 --> Float64
> Complex32, Complex64 --> Complex64
>
> The only thing this really leaves out, is a higher performance
> implementation of sum/mean which Peter referred to a few times.
> Peter, if you want to write a specialized module, we'd be happy
> to put it in the add-ons package.
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