2 cents from the author of the first folio:<br><br>The intent was to allow creation of masked arrays with copy=no, so that the original data could be retrieved from it if desired. But I was quite, quite rigorous about NEVER assuming the data in a masked slot made any sense whatsoever.
<br><br>The intention was that there are two ways to get a numeric array out of a masked one:<br><br>1. Get the data field<br>2. m.filled()<br><br>(1) is strictly at your own risk. <br><br><br><br>