[SciPy-User] Proposal for a new data analysis toolbox

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 8:22 AM, Keith Goodman <kwgoodman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 8:14 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 7:52 AM,  <josef.pktd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I would like statistics (scipy.stats and statsmodels) to stick with
>>> default axis=0.
>>> I would be in favor of axis=None for nan extended versions of numpy
>>> functions and axis=0 for stats functions as defaults, but since it
>>> will be a standalone package with wider usage, I will be able to keep
>>> track of axis=-1.
>>
>> Please let's keep everything using the same default -- it doesn't
>> actually make life simpler if for every function I have to squint and
>> try to remember whether or not it's a "stats function". (Like, what's
>> "mean"?)
>>
>> I think the world already has a sufficient supply of arbitrarily
>> inconsistent scientific APIs.
>
> nanstd, nanmean, etc use axis=None for the default.

Great -- I understood Josef as arguing that they shouldn't.

>What would
> axis=None mean for a moving window sum?

Well, the same as mov_sum(arr.ravel()), I suppose. Probably not very
useful for multidimensional arrays, but I'm not sure there's a better
default.

-- Nathaniel