I think the issue in random specifically is that a raw list of available functions does not provide suitable guidance for someone looking for random variate generating function. This is because the module-level API is mostly dominated by methods of the singleton RandomState instance. Best practice going forward is to use the methods of a Generator instance, most likely provided by default_rng(). A simple API-list will not be able to provide this guidance. FFT has a very simple API and so a simple list make sense. Similarly, np.random before the generation was revamped, which is hy the old-style was adequate for <=1.16, but not for >=1.17 Kevin On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 6:09 PM Paul M. <pmmagic@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Melissa,
I think that's the right approach. Looking through the current docs, I think the page on the FFT module is exemplary in this regard:
https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/routines.fft.html
It lists all the available functions (with links to details), and then has a section on "Background Information", "Implementation Details", etc. It's easy to get a quick overview of what the available functions are, and then ease into the background info in terms of how it works.
Cheers, Paul
On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 12:44 PM Melissa Mendonça <melissawm@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Paul,
Do you think having a page with the flat list of routines back, in addition to the explanations, would solve this?
- Melissa
On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 1:34 PM Paul M. <pmmagic@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi All,
The documentation of Numpy's submodules used to have a fairly standard structure as shown here in the 1.16 documentation:
https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.16.1/reference/routines.random.html
Now the same page in the API documentation looks like this:
https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/random/index.html
While I appreciate the expository text in the new documentation about how the generators work, this new version is much less useful as a reference to the API. It seems like it might fit better in the user manual rather than the API reference.
From my perspective it seems like the new version of the documentation is harder to navigate in terms of finding information quickly (more scrolling, harder to get a bird's eye view of functions in various submodules, etc).
Has anyone else had a similar reaction to the changes? I teach a couple of courses in scientific computing and bioinformatics and my students seem to also struggle to get a sense of what the different modules offer based on the new version of the documentation. For now, I'm referring them to the old (1.70) reference manuals as a better way to get acquainted with the libraries.
Cheers, Paul Magwene _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- numpy-discussion@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to numpy-discussion-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/numpy-discussion.python.org/ Member address: melissawm@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- numpy-discussion@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to numpy-discussion-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/numpy-discussion.python.org/ Member address: pmmagic@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- numpy-discussion@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to numpy-discussion-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/numpy-discussion.python.org/ Member address: kevin.k.sheppard@gmail.com