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

[Ryan]

That would mostly be an unnecessary line of code. Doing that to a list is just like doing list(iterator). The difference is that it would make all lists lose that precision, and we'd end up with another problem on your hands.

Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:

>On 08/07/2013 03:20 PM, David Mertz wrote:
>>
>> Here's a question for the actual statisticians on the list (I'm not
>close to this).  Would having a look-ahead window of
>> moderate size (probably configurable) do enough good in numeric
>accuracy to be worthwhile?  Obviously, creating
>> pathological cases is still possible, but in the "normal" situation,
>does this matter enough?  I.e. if the function were
>> to read 100 numbers from an iterator, perform some manipulation on
>their ordering or scaling, produce that better
>> intermediate result, then do the same with the next chunk of 100
>numbers, is this enough of a win to have as an option?
>
>I have a follow-up question:  considering the built-in error when
>calculating statistics, is the difference between 
>sequence and iterator significant?  Would we be just as well served
>with `it = iter(sequence)` and always using the 
>one-pass algorithm?
>
>--
>~Ethan~
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