[Numpy-discussion] using the same vocabulary for missing value ideas

[Mark Wiebe]

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Peter <
numpy-discussion at maubp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Mark Wiebe <mwwiebe at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It appears to me that one of the biggest reason some of us have been
> talking
> > past each other in the discussions is that different people have
> different
> > definitions for the terms being used. Until this is thoroughly cleared
> up, I
> > feel the design process is tilting at windmills.
> > In the interests of clarity in our discussions, here is a starting point
> > which is consistent with the NEP. These definitions have been added in a
> > glossary within the NEP. If there are any ideas for amendments to these
> > definitions that we can agree on, I will update the NEP with those
> > amendments. Also, if I missed any important terms which need to be added,
> > please propose definitions for them.
>
> That sounds good - I've only been scanning these discussions and it
> is confusing.
>
> > NA (Not Available)
> >     A placeholder for a value which is unknown to computations. That
> >     value may be temporarily hidden with a mask, may have been lost
> >     due to hard drive corruption, or gone for any number of reasons.
> >     This is the same as NA in the R project.
>
> Could you expand that to say how sums and products act with NA
> (since you do so for the IGNORE case).
>

I've added that, here's the new version:

NA (Not Available)
    A placeholder for a value which is unknown to computations. That
    value may be temporarily hidden with a mask, may have been lost
    due to hard drive corruption, or gone for any number of reasons.
    For sums and products this means to produce NA if any of the inputs
    are NA.  This is the same as NA in the R project.

Thanks,

-Mark


>
> Thanks,
>
> Peter
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