Hi, I'm pleased to announce the availability of the first release candidate of Scipy 0.16.0. Please try it out and report any issues on the Github issue tracker or on the scipy-dev mailing list. This first RC is a source-only release. Sources and release notes can be found at https://github.com/scipy/scipy/releases/tag/v0.16.0rc1. Note that this is a bit of an experiment - it's the first time we use the Github Releases feature. Feedback welcome. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release! Ralf ========================== SciPy 0.16.0 Release Notes ========================== .. note:: Scipy 0.16.0 is not released yet! .. contents:: SciPy 0.16.0 is the culmination of 6 months of hard work. It contains many new features, numerous bug-fixes, improved test coverage and better documentation. There have been a number of deprecations and API changes in this release, which are documented below. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release, as there are a large number of bug-fixes and optimizations. Moreover, our development attention will now shift to bug-fix releases on the 0.15.x branch, and on adding new features on the master branch. This release requires Python 2.6, 2.7 or 3.2-3.4 and NumPy 1.6.2 or greater. Highlights of this release include: - A Cython API for BLAS/LAPACK in `scipy.linalg` - A new benchmark suite. It's now straightforward to add new benchmarks, and they're routinely included with performance enhancement PRs. - Support for the second order sections (SOS) format in `scipy.signal`. New features ============ Benchmark suite --------------- The benchmark suite has switched to using `Airspeed Velocity <http://spacetelescope.github.io/asv/>`__ for benchmarking. You can run the suite locally via ``python runtests.py --bench``. For more details, see ``benchmarks/README.rst``. `scipy.linalg` improvements --------------------------- A full set of Cython wrappers for BLAS and LAPACK has been added in the modules `scipy.linalg.cython_blas` and `scipy.linalg.cython_lapack`. In Cython, these wrappers can now be cimported from their corresponding modules and used without linking directly against BLAS or LAPACK. The functions `scipy.linalg.qr_delete`, `scipy.linalg.qr_insert` and `scipy.linalg.qr_update` for updating QR decompositions were added. The function `scipy.linalg.solve_circulant` solves a linear system with a circulant coefficient matrix. The function `scipy.linalg.invpascal` computes the inverse of a Pascal matrix. The function `scipy.linalg.solve_toeplitz`, a Levinson-Durbin Toeplitz solver, was added. Added wrapper for potentially useful LAPACK function ``*lasd4``. It computes the square root of the i-th updated eigenvalue of a positive symmetric rank-one modification to a positive diagonal matrix. See its LAPACK documentation and unit tests for it to get more info. Added two extra wrappers for LAPACK least-square solvers. Namely, they are ``*gelsd`` and ``*gelsy``. Wrappers for the LAPACK ``*lange`` functions, which calculate various matrix norms, were added. Wrappers for ``*gtsv`` and ``*ptsv``, which solve ``A*X = B`` for tri-diagonal matrix ``A``, were added. `scipy.signal` improvements --------------------------- Support for second order sections (SOS) as a format for IIR filters was added. The new functions are: * `scipy.signal.sosfilt` * `scipy.signal.sosfilt_zi`, * `scipy.signal.sos2tf` * `scipy.signal.sos2zpk` * `scipy.signal.tf2sos` * `scipy.signal.zpk2sos`. Additionally, the filter design functions `iirdesign`, `iirfilter`, `butter`, `cheby1`, `cheby2`, `ellip`, and `bessel` can return the filter in the SOS format. The function `scipy.signal.place_poles`, which provides two methods to place poles for linear systems, was added. The option to use Gustafsson's method for choosing the initial conditions of the forward and backward passes was added to `scipy.signal.filtfilt`. New classes ``TransferFunction``, ``StateSpace`` and ``ZerosPolesGain`` were added. These classes are now returned when instantiating `scipy.signal.lti`. Conversion between those classes can be done explicitly now. An exponential (Poisson) window was added as `scipy.signal.exponential`, and a Tukey window was added as `scipy.signal.tukey`. The function for computing digital filter group delay was added as `scipy.signal.group_delay`. The functionality for spectral analysis and spectral density estimation has been significantly improved: `scipy.signal.welch` became ~8x faster and the functions `scipy.signal.spectrogram`, `scipy.signal.coherence` and `scipy.signal.csd` (cross-spectral density) were added. `scipy.signal.lsim` was rewritten - all known issues are fixed, so this function can now be used instead of ``lsim2``; ``lsim`` is orders of magnitude faster than ``lsim2`` in most cases. `scipy.sparse` improvements --------------------------- The function `scipy.sparse.norm`, which computes sparse matrix norms, was added. The function `scipy.sparse.random`, which allows to draw random variates from an arbitrary distribution, was added. `scipy.spatial` improvements ---------------------------- `scipy.spatial.cKDTree` has seen a major rewrite, which improved the performance of the ``query`` method significantly, added support for parallel queries, pickling, and options that affect the tree layout. See pull request 4374 for more details. The function `scipy.spatial.procrustes` for Procrustes analysis (statistical shape analysis) was added. `scipy.stats` improvements -------------------------- The Wishart distribution and its inverse have been added, as `scipy.stats.wishart` and `scipy.stats.invwishart`. The Exponentially Modified Normal distribution has been added as `scipy.stats.exponnorm`. The Generalized Normal distribution has been added as `scipy.stats.gennorm`. All distributions now contain a ``random_state`` property and allow specifying a specific ``numpy.random.RandomState`` random number generator when generating random variates. Many statistical tests and other `scipy.stats` functions that have multiple return values now return ``namedtuples``. See pull request 4709 for details. `scipy.optimize` improvements ----------------------------- A new derivative-free method DF-SANE has been added to the nonlinear equation system solving function `scipy.optimize.root`. Deprecated features =================== ``scipy.stats.pdf_fromgamma`` is deprecated. This function was undocumented, untested and rarely used. Statsmodels provides equivalent functionality with ``statsmodels.distributions.ExpandedNormal``. ``scipy.stats.fastsort`` is deprecated. This function is unnecessary, ``numpy.argsort`` can be used instead. ``scipy.stats.signaltonoise`` and ``scipy.stats.mstats.signaltonoise`` are deprecated. These functions did not belong in ``scipy.stats`` and are rarely used. See issue #609 for details. ``scipy.stats.histogram2`` is deprecated. This function is unnecessary, ``numpy.histogram2d`` can be used instead. Backwards incompatible changes ============================== The deprecated global optimizer ``scipy.optimize.anneal`` was removed. The following deprecated modules have been removed: ``scipy.lib.blas``, ``scipy.lib.lapack``, ``scipy.linalg.cblas``, ``scipy.linalg.fblas``, ``scipy.linalg.clapack``, ``scipy.linalg.flapack``. They had been deprecated since Scipy 0.12.0, the functionality should be accessed as `scipy.linalg.blas` and `scipy.linalg.lapack`. The deprecated function ``scipy.special.all_mat`` has been removed. The deprecated functions ``fprob``, ``ksprob``, ``zprob``, ``randwcdf`` and ``randwppf`` have been removed from `scipy.stats`. Other changes ============= The version numbering for development builds has been updated to comply with PEP 440. Building with ``python setup.py develop`` is now supported.