> I'm not sure what this question is asking, so I'll answer what I think
> it is asking.
>
> The mean, min, max, and average functions are *not* ufuncs.   They are
> methods of particular ufuncs.
>
Yes - that's what  wanted to hear !  I'm just trying to bring in the
"user's" point of view:  Not thinking about how they are implemented
under the hood:  mean,min,max,average  have a very similar "feeling" to
them as "abs".

While we're on the subject of the "user's" point of view, the term "ufunc" is not very new-user friendly, yet it gets slung around fairly often. I'm not sure what to do about it exactly, but maybe for starters it would be nice to add a concise definition of "ufunc" to the numpy glossary: http://www.scipy.org/Numpy_Glossary.

Can anyone come up with such a definition? Here's my stab at it:

ufunc: A function that operates element-wise on arrays.

But I have a feeling there's more to it than that.
--bb