[Numpy-discussion] is __array_ufunc__ ready for prime-time?

[josef.pktd at gmail.com]

On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 2:39 PM, Marten van Kerkwijk <
m.h.vankerkwijk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Josef,
>
> Indeed, for some applications one would like to have different units
> for different parts of an array. And that means that, at present, the
> quantity implementations that we have are no good at storing, say, a
> covariance matrix involving parameters with different units, where
> thus each element of the covariance matrix has a different unit. I
> fear at present it would have to be an object array instead; other
> cases may be a bit easier to solve, by, e.g., allowing structured
> arrays with similarly structured units. I do note that actually doing
> it would clarify, e.g., what the axes in Vandermonde (spelling?)
> matrices mean.
>

(I have problems remembering the spelling of proper names)
np.vander and various polyvander functions/methods

One point I wanted to make is that the units are overhead and irrelevant in
the computation. It's the outcome that might have units.
Eg. polyfit could use various underlying polynomials,
e.g. numpy.polynomial.chebyshev.chebvander(...) and various linear algebra
and projection versions, and the output would still be the same units.

aside: I just found an interesting
http://docs.astropy.org/en/latest/api/astropy.stats.biweight.biweight_midcovariance.html
is pairwise, but uses asanyarray

e.g. using asarray (for robust scatter)
https://github.com/statsmodels/statsmodels/pull/3230/files#diff-8fd46d3044db86ae7992f5d817eec6c7R473
I guess I would have problems replacing asarray by asanyarray.

one last related one
What's the inverse of a covariance matrix? It's just sum, multiplication
and division (which I wouldn't remember), but for the computation is just
np.linalg.inv or np.linalg.pinv which is a simple shortcut.


Josef


>
> That said, there is truly an enormous benefit for checking units on
> "regular" operations. Spacecraft have missed Mars because people
> didn't do it properly...
>

https://twitter.com/search?q=2%20unit%20tests.%200%20integration%20tests



>
> All the best,
>
> Marten
>
> p.s. The scipy functions should indeed be included in the ufuncs
> covered; there is a fairly long-standing issue for that in astropy...
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