Python "why" questions

[geremy condra]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Lie Ryan <lie.1296 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/16/10 21:54, David Cournapeau wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 9:53 AM, Gregory Ewing
>> <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>>>> On Aug 7, 2010, at 9:14 PM, John Nagle wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>  The languages which have real multidimensional arrays, rather
>>>>> than arrays of arrays, tend to use 1-based subscripts.  That
>>>>> reflects standard practice in mathematics.
>>>
>>> Not always -- mathematicians use whatever starting index is
>>> most convenient for the problem at hand.
>>
>> Yes, there are many engineering fields where index starts at 0. Partly
>> for the reason you have stated concerning polynomials, especially
>> since this extend to series, which are pervasive in numerical
>> computing. In linear algebra, though, I remember to have always noted
>> matrices indexes in the [1,n] range, not [0,n-1].
>
> I'm sure some would prefer to denote it as [0, n)

Count me in on that, that'd be great.

Geremy Condra