[Numpy-discussion] Silent Broadcasting considered harmful

[R Schumacher]

At 02:47 PM 2/8/2015, Simon Wood wrote:
>Not quite the same. This is not so much about language semantics as 
>mathematical definitions. You (the Numpy community) have decided to 
>overload certain mathematical operators to act in a way that is not 
>consistent with linear algebra teachings. This can be a bit 
>confusing for people who develop and implement mathematical 
>algorithms that have a strong foundation in linear algebra, 
>irrespective of the language they are migrating from.
>
>With that said, I do appreciate the comments by Matthew, Eelco and 
>others. Numpy is *not* a linear algebra package, so it does not 
>adhere to the same mathematical definitions. This realization has 
>cleared some things up.

Via my (admittedly infrequent use of) numpy.linalg
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/routines.linalg.html#linear-algebra-on-several-matrices-at-once
I think it behaves more in line with algebraic thinkers.

I do not have any issue with broadcasting, and use it frequently, but 
I've always wanted to see more examples and discussion directly in 
the docs, in general.
I have over years post/argued for a doc site more like PHP-doc, where 
users can contribute examples and discuss them. There is a wealth of 
such examples here in the list and the tutorial, but requires 
unnecessary time and Google-foo.

- Ray Schumacher