On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 8:50 PM C W <tmrsg11@gmail.com> wrote:
I can't be the first person who asked about range() that calculates the *actual* range of two numbers.
I have not used numpy or pandas long enough to know, but how has it been dealt with before?
First, through `describe()`, then they added `value_range()`, then they deprecated `value_range()` in favor of `describe()` again. https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/commit/e66d25e9f082c93bb4bab3caf2a4fdc8... http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.16.0/whatsnew.html#removal-of... You can ask on the pandas-dev mailing list why: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pandas-dev As for numpy, trying to come up with the right semantics for the shape of the output is usually when such discussions die. Functions like a statistical range calculation are expected to be like `min()` and `max()` and allow us to apply them axis-wise (e.g. just down columns or just across rows, or more any other axis in an N-D array). Odds are, the way that we'll pack the two results into a single output will probably not be what you want in half of the cases, so you'll just have to unpack anyways, and at that point, it's just not *that* much more convenient than calling `min()` and `max()` separately. So every time we write `xmin, xmax = x.min(), x.max()`, we grumble a little bit, but it's just a grumble, not a significant pain. pandas has other considerations, but you'll have to ask them. -- Robert Kern