[Numpy-discussion] Code Review for the Two-Sided Geometric Distribution - PR 14890

[Andrew Reed]

 All,

I created a PR for the "two-sided geometric distribution":
https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/14890

This is my first attempt at contributing to any sort of open source
project, and I can already see that some of the post-commit checks have
failed.  I will try to dig into those.  Also, I was unable to get Sphinx to
build a reference to my added function, so I have not been able to verify
if the docstring renders properly.

Additional Notes:
(1) The first paper that I reference presented this distribution as the
"discrete Laplace distribution."  This is also how the R programming
language refers to this distribution.  SciPy, however, appears to use a
different distribution for what it calls the "discrete Laplacian
distribution."  Personally, I feel that referring to the version in my PR
as the "two-sided geometric distribution" better conveys how it works.

(2) I describe the parameter 'alpha' as the distribution's "rate of
decay."  I can see, though, that this may be an inaccurate way to describe
'alpha' since it doesn't work exactly like a "rate of decay" in the Physics
sense.  Perhaps I should have referred to it as the "distribution's
constant ratio."  Either way, I think the documentation should be clear
enough that a user would not confuse 'alpha' with 'p' from the geometric
function (caveat: once the distribution moves away from zero, alpha works
like 1 - p).

Respectfully,
Andrew Reed
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