On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 05:54:07PM -0800, Dr. Phillip M. Feldman wrote:
Pauli Virtanen-3 wrote:
Nevertheless, I can't really regard dropping the imaginary part a significant issue.
I am amazed that anyone could say this. For anyone who works with Fourier transforms, or with electrical circuits, or with electromagnetic waves, dropping the imaginary part is a huge issue because we get answers that are totally wrong.
When I recently tried to validate a code, the answers were wrong, and it took two full days to track down the cause. I am now forced to reconsider carefully whether Python/NumPy is a suitable platform for serious scientific computing.
You've now said this a couple times. And it is fine if that is your opinion. However, I think it is incorrect. I've been using numeric/numarray/numpy for about 12 years as my main scientific computing platform. And I do extensive work with Fourier Transforms and other complex numbers. I have not once run into this issue and in fact, my use of numpy has improved my scientific productivity dramatically. Most of the casting rules were set a very long time ago and are there for very good reasons. While it is certainly possibly that there could be bugs in corner cases of some of them, or that those rules surprise some people due to their familiarity with other behaviours, but that does not change the fact that most of them are in place in numpy for good reasons. Scott -- Scott M. Ransom Address: NRAO Phone: (434) 296-0320 520 Edgemont Rd. email: sransom@nrao.edu Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA GPG Fingerprint: 06A9 9553 78BE 16DB 407B FFCA 9BFA B6FF FFD3 2989