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

[Nick Coghlan]

On 4 August 2013 22:51, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 12:07 AM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>> On 08/03/2013 07:00 PM, Eli Bendersky wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> While I'm somewhat -0.5 on the general idea of the statistics module
>>> (competing with well-established, super-optimized and
>>> by-themselves-famous numeric libraries Python has does not sound like
>>> a worthy goal),
>>
>>
>> Sure, competing with already established libraries is silly.  Fortunately,
>> that's not what is happening here.  This PEP is about providing a minimal,
>> common set of statistics functions for the average person.
>
> I'm really not sure who this average person is, but everyone keeps
> talking about him. Is it the same person for whom Dummies books are
> written?
>
> Anyhow, "minimal" is a dangerous slope. With such a module in the
> stdlib, I'm 100% sure we'll get a constant stream of - please add just
> this function (from SciPy) - it's so useful to the "average person" -
> requests. This is unavoidable. And it will be difficult to judge at
> that point why certain funcitonality belongs or does not belong here.
> So over time we'll end up with a partial Greenspun, by containing an
> ad hoc, slow implementation of half of Numpy/SciPy.

This is why the PEP needs to reference Raymond's original proposal to
create and add this library. The "average person" in this context is
"students of a very experienced Python instructor".

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia