[SciPy-Dev] [SciPy-User] log pdf, cdf, etc

[Ralf Gommers]

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Travis Oliphant <oliphant at enthought.com>wrote:

>
> On May 31, 2010, at 6:39 AM, Ralf Gommers wrote:
>


>  These recent changes are a bit problematic for several reasons:
> - there are many new methods for distributions without tests.
>
> These methods are simple to see and verify.    Which methods specifically
> are you concerned about?
>

They're not all simple, for example rv_continuous._reduce_func. Since it
contains inner function definitions inside an "else" block there's also a
good chance it's actually broken.

And in principle I'm worried about all of them. The python 2.4/2.5 syntax
error was caught early, but what if some code you regard as simple is broken
in a less obvious way on 2.4/2.5? Maybe a user finds it in a release
candidate, forcing us to build an extra one? Or just after the final
release?

>
> - there are no docs for many new private and public methods
>
>
> They are all fairly self explanatory.   But, docs can be added if needed.
>

For you, and maybe for me too. But for undergraduate students, or Joe in
accounting who inherited  this random app that's essential for his job? It's
simple, no public docs without docstrings. And preferably no private ones
either.

Thanks for fixing all public docs quickly though. You missed just one,
gamma.fit.

>
> - invalid syntax: http://projects.scipy.org/scipy/ticket/1186
>
>
> This has been fixed (it was easier to fix the syntax then file the
> ticket...)  Also to be clear this is only invalid for Python < 2.6 (the
> comment makes it sound like somehow the changes weren't tested at all).
>
> I didn't mean to imply that you were committing code that didn't even work
for you.

> - the old rv_continuous doc template was put back in
>
>
> I'm not sure what you mean.   Which change did this?
>

The first one of your recent commits, r6392. The docstrings for subclasses
of rv_continuous and rv_discrete are not generated from this template
anymore, which is why it was removed. Look at line 862 (# generate docstring
for subclass instances) and below that to see how it works now.

If you're wondering why that changed, the main reasons are (1) to make the
docstrings conform to the standard, (2) to be able to put useful info in the
base classes, like "this is how you subclass it: ..." instead of a template,
and (3) to be able to customize individual distribution docstrings easily.


>
> This, plus Josef saying that he doesn't want to fix the API for some
> methods yet, makes me want to take it out of the 0.8.x branch. Any
> objections to that Travis or Josef?
>
>
> I would really like to see these changes go in to 0.8.x.    If Josef feels
> strongly about the API in the future, we can change it for the next release.
>   I don't understand what the specific concerns are.
>
> No you can't. For API changes we do have a policy, they need deprecation
first. Which means if we release it like this now, we're stuck with it till
0.10 / 1.0.


In summary, I see quite a few reasons why this shouldn't go in and don't see
a compelling reason to release it right now. The 0.9 release is
(tentatively) planned for September, so you don't have to worry that your
changes sit in trunk unreleased for 1.5 years.

Cheers,

Ralf
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