[Python-Dev] PEP 450 adding statistics module

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 14:24:50 -0400
"R. David Murray" <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 14:10:39 -0400, "Eric V. Smith" <eric at trueblade.com> wrote:
> > On 08/15/2013 01:58 PM, Mark Dickinson wrote:
> > > On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info
> > > <mailto:steve at pearwood.info>> wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > >     - Each scheme ended up needing to be a separate function, for ease
> > >     of both implementation and testing. So I had four private median
> > >     functions, which I put inside a class to act as namespace and avoid
> > >     polluting the main namespace. Then I needed a "master function" to
> > >     select which of the methods should be called, with all the
> > >     additional testing and documentation that entailed.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > That's just an implementation issue, though, and sounds like a minor
> > > inconvenience to the implementor rather than anything serious;  I don't
> > > think that that should dictate the API that's used.
> > > 
> > >     - The API doesn't really feel very Pythonic to me. For example, we
> > >     write:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > And I guess this is subjective:  conversely, the API you're proposing
> > > doesn't feel Pythonic to me. :-)  I'd like the hear the opinion of other
> > > python-dev readers.
> > 
> > I agree with Mark: the proposed median, median.low, etc., doesn't feel
> > right. Is there any example of doing this in the stdlib? I suggest just
> > median(), median_low(), etc.
> 
> I too prefer the median_low naming rather than median.low.  I'm not
> sure I can articulate why, but certainly the fact that that latter
> isn't used anywhere else in the stdlib that I can think of is
> probably a lot of it :)

Count me in the Agreement Car, with Mark and RDM.

Regards

Antoine.