[Numpy-discussion] please change mean to use dtype=float

Travis Oliphant oliphant.travis at ieee.org
Tue Sep 19 22:33:52 EDT 2006


Sebastian Haase wrote:
> I still would argue that getting a "good" (smaller rounding errors) answer 
> should be the default -- if speed is wanted, then *that* could be still 
> specified by explicitly using dtype=float32  (which would also be a possible 
> choice for int32 input) . 
>   
So you are arguing for using long double then.... ;-)

> In image processing we always want means to be calculated in float64 even 
> though input data is always float32 (if not uint16).
>
> Also it is simpler to say "float64 is the default" (full stop.) - instead 
>   
> "float64 is the default unless you have float32" 
>   
"the type you have is the default except for integers".  Do you really 
want float64 to be the default for float96?

Unless we are going to use long double as the default, then I'm not 
convinced that we should special-case the "double" type.

-Travis





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