[Numpy-discussion] EHN: Discusions about 'add numpy.topk'

[Daniele Nicolodi]

On 29/05/2021 18:33, David Menéndez Hurtado wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, 29 May 2021, 4:29 pm Ralf Gommers, <ralf.gommers at gmail.com
> <mailto:ralf.gommers at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>     On Fri, May 28, 2021 at 4:58 PM <kangkai at mail.ustc.edu.cn
>     <mailto:kangkai at mail.ustc.edu.cn>> wrote:
> 
>         Hi all,
> 
>         Finding topk elements is widely used in several fields, but
>         missed in NumPy.
>         I implement this functionality named as  numpy.topk using core numpy
>         functions and open a PR:
> 
>         https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/19117
>         <https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/19117>
> 
>         Any discussion are welcome.
> 
> 
>     Thanks for the proposal Kang. I think this functionality is indeed a
>     fairly obvious gap in what Numpy offers, and would make sense to
>     add. A detailed comparison with other libraries would be very
>     helpful here. TensorFlow and JAX call this function `top_k`, while
>     PyTorch, Dask and MXNet call it `topk`.
> 
> 
> When I saw `topk` I initially parsed it as "to pk", similar to the
> current `tolist`. I think `top_k` is more explicit and clear.

What does k stand for here? As someone that never encountered this
function before I find both names equally confusing. If I understand
what the function is supposed to be doing, I think largest() would be
much more descriptive.

Cheers,
Dan