[SciPy-Dev] New subpackage: scipy.data

[Pauli Virtanen]

Hi,

to, 2018-03-29 kello 15:43 -0400, Warren Weckesser kirjoitti:
> According to the SciPy roadmap (
> https://github.com/scipy/scipy/blob/master/doc/ROADMAP.rst.txt#misc),
> `scipy.misc` will eventually be removed. Currently, the combinatorial
> functions and the image-related operations are all deprecated.  The
> only
> non-deprecated functions in `misc` are `central_diff_weights()`,
> `derivative()` and the two functions that return image data:
> `ascent()` and
> `face()`.
> 
> As a steps towards the deprecation of `misc`, I propose that we
> create a
> new package, `scipy.data`, for holding data sets.  `ascent()` and
> `face()`
> would move there, and the new ECG data set proposed in a current pull
> request (https://github.com/scipy/scipy/pull/8627) would be put
> there.

At first sight I think that these two functions (and the third one with
ECG signal sample) alone would sound more suitable to be placed in
`scipy.ndimage` and `scipy.signal`. Top-level module for them alone
sounds overkill, and I'm not sure if discoverability alone is enough.

>From the rest of the thread, it appears that there is not very clear
picture of what else we would like to put in there.

For the downloadable datasets idea, I would not recommend doing
anything that requires maintenance. Sorting out hosting issues is
boring, and when done on a volunteer basis it always tends to fall on
the same chumps. It's not really in the core mission of the project.

Note also the (probably mostly forgotten) numpy.DataSource 
https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.DataSource.html

	Pauli