[Python-ideas] Pre-PEP: adding a statistics module to Python

[MRAB]

On 04/08/2013 02:51, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On 04/08/13 05:47, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
>
>> The PEP does not mention statistics.sum(), but the reference
>> implementation includes it.  I am not sure stdlib needs the third
>> sum function after builtins.sum and math.fsum.  I think it will be
>> better to improve builtins.sum instead.
>
>
> I don't know enough C to volunteer to do that. If the built-in sum()
> is improved to the point it passes my unit tests, I would consider
> using it in the future. However, it is traditional to expose a sum()
> function under Stats in scientific calculators, and I think that
> whether I use my own, or the built-in, the statistics module should
> continue to expose it as a public function.
>
> For the same reason, I'm very slightly +0.01 leaning towards adding a
> sum2 function for calculating the sum of squares, but on the other
> hand it is simple enough to do with a generator expression:
>
> sum(x**2 for x in data)
>
> so I thought I'd leave it out and see if there is demand for it.
>
If you do add it, a better name might be "sum_sq" or similar.