[Numpy-discussion] towards a more productive missing values/masked arrays discussion...

[Nathaniel Smith]

So one thing that came up on the call yesterday is that there actually
is a significant chunk of functionality that everyone seems to agree
is useful, needed, and basically how it should work.

This includes:
  -- the basic existence and semantics for NA values (however this is
implemented)
  -- that there should exist a dtype/bit-pattern implementation for
NAs (whatever other implementations there might also be)
  -- that ufunc's should take a where= argument
  -- that there should be a better way for ndarray subclasses like
numpy.ma to override the arguments to ufuncs involving them
  -- maybe some other things I'm not thinking of

The real controversy is around what role masking should play, both at
the API and implementation level; there are lots of different
arguments for different approaches, and it's not at all clear any
current proposal will actually solve the problems are facing (or even
what those problems are).

So rather than continue to go around in circles indefinitely on that,
I'm going to write up some "miniNEPs" just focusing on the details of
how the features we do agree on should work, so we can hopefully have
a more technical discussion of *that*.

Cheers,
-- Nathaniel