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

[Dag Sverre Seljebotn]

On 11/24/2010 12:54 PM, josef.pktd at gmail.com wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 2:56 AM, Dag Sverre Seljebotn
> <dagss at student.matnat.uio.no>  wrote:
>    
>> On 11/23/2010 10:17 PM, Keith Goodman wrote:
>>      
>>> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Sebastian Haase<seb.haase at gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>
>>>        
>>>> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 8:23 PM, Keith Goodman<kwgoodman at gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>>
>>>>          
>>>>> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 7:35 AM, Keith Goodman<kwgoodman at gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>            
>>>>>> This thread started on the numpy list:
>>>>>> http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2010-November/053958.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>>              
>>>>> Based on the feedback I got on the scipy and numpy lists, I expanded
>>>>> the focus of the Nanny project from A to B, where
>>>>>
>>>>> A = Faster, drop-in replacement of the NaN functions in Numpy and Scipy
>>>>> B = Fast, NaN-aware descriptive statistics of NumPy arrays
>>>>>
>>>>> I also renamed the project from Nanny to dsna (descriptive statistics
>>>>> of numpy arrays) and dropped the nan prefix from all function names
>>>>> (the package is simpler if all functions are NaN aware). A description
>>>>> of the project can be found in the readme file here:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://github.com/kwgoodman/dsna
>>>>>
>>>>>            
>>>> Nanny did have the advantage of being "catchy" - and easy to remember... !
>>>> no chance of remembering a 4 ("random") letter sequence....
>>>> If you want to change the name, I suggest including the idea of
>>>> speed/cython/.. or so -- wasn't that the original idea ....
>>>>
>>>>          
>>> I couldn't come up with anything. I actually named the project STAT
>>> but then couldn't import ipython because python has a stat module.
>>> Ugh. I'd like a better name so I am open to suggestions. Even an
>>> unrelated word would be good, you know, like Maple.
>>>
>>>        
>> This feels like the kind of functionality that, once it is there, people
>> might start to take for granted. In those cases I think finding a boring
>> name is proper :-)
>>
>> So how about something boring under the scikits namespace.
>> scikits.datautils, scikits.arraystats, ...
>>
>> If one wants to be cute, perhaps "scikits.missing", for functions that
>> deal well with missing data (unless I misunderstand, I don't use NaN
>> much myself).
>>
>> I guess "Missing" by itself would be rather un-Googlable :-)
>>      
> I think having a good name for search engines makes a name more practical
> (compare a search for statsmodels with a search for pandas or larry)
>    

Well, this is where the scikits prefix helps. "sparse" is a rather 
common word, but "scikits.sparse" is very easily Googleable. In the end, 
I prefer "scikits.boring" to having to learn a lot of exotic nouns :-)

+, if you talk with somebody at a conference and can't remember the 
name, it's a lot easier to say "oh, there's a scikit for that" (which 
you'd usually remember), than "that's easily solved by this 
project...hmm..Bamboo?...was that it? Do some Googling on nan and Python 
and statistics and you'll find it..."

Dag Sverre

> "nanstats" only shows similar programs to what this will be
> "nandata" doesn't seem to be used yet
>
> "nanpy" looks like a worm
> "pynan" "pynans" google thinks its a misspelling
>
> I like boring and descriptive
>
> Josef
>
>    
>> Dag Sverre
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>>      
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