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

[Nick Coghlan]

On 4 August 2013 23:53, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:
> Right, so it's better to nip it at the bud. There's a good reason the
> stdlib does not grow new features every second friday. It's because
> there is a group of people who has to stick with it for years
> maintaining all that code. It's perfectly OK to look critically at all
> new proposals. Having one way to do it is a Python design goal.

Creation of a module like this was *explicitly requested* by core
developers (originally Raymond, but supported by others, including
me), to provide a robust implementation of "high school statistics" in
the standard library. This isn't something Steven just dropped on us
out of nowhere - the idea had its genesis on python-ideas, spawned
Steven's stats module on PyPI, and has now come full circle with the
proposal for a cutdown version of the stats module as "statistics" in
the standard library. (And yes, this history should be covered in the
PEP, rather than assuming people know it already)

Just as the math module covers the basics of trigonometry, without
covering everything else that is provided by NumPy/SciPy, this
proposed module covers the basics of statistics. It's the included
battery - numpy/scipy is the nuclear reactor that needs to stay as a
third party download.

Cheers,
Nick.

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