[SciPy-Dev] Working on the docstring for stats.distributions.rv_continuous.fit

[David Goldsmith]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 7:26 AM, <josef.pktd at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Skipper Seabold <jsseabold at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:38 PM, David Goldsmith
> > <d.l.goldsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi!  IMHO, the descriptions of the *args & **kwds parameters of the
> >> Subject-referenced method are not very clear, so let me see if I
> understand
> >> correctly:
> >>
> >
> > I agree and was having a look at this last week.  Here's my take.  I
> > would err on the side of verbose in these docs, as the stats docs seem
> > to be a general source of confusion from comments I've received off
> > list, though obviously Josef, Travis, and others would know the
> > details better than I.
> >
> >> *args : float(s), optional
> >>     If the distribution in question depends on n parameters, _excluding
> >> location and scale_, then *args may contain 0 to n floats, which are
> >> starting estimates for the corresponding parameters.  No default
> value(s).
> >>
> >
> > I would add a note that n can be found in the numargs attribute of the
> > distribution.
> >
> >> **kwds _may_ contain the following:
> >>
> >> loc : float, optional
> >>     Starting estimate for the location parameter, no default.
> >>
> >> scale : float, optional
> >>     Starting estimate for the scale parameter, no default.
> >
> > If the extra args *and* loc *and* scale are not specified, then the
> > default starting estimates for loc, scale, and args are taken from the
> > distribution's _fitstart(data) method.  I think it would make more
> > sense to take the defaults for ones that are not provided by the user
> > only, but this is not how the code reads at the moment as far as I can
> > tell.
>
> If you have a proposal how to improve the code (e.g. default
> handling), then you could file a ticket, so we know what to review
> before the next release.
>
> Josef
>

And in this particular case, please announce on the list when you've done
so.  Thanks!

DG
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