Hi, I am catching up with an assigned task that I slipped. I am wondering a few things about the numpy.linalg.eig() API (eigvals() is also included in this discussion, but for simplicity let's focus on eig()). AFAIU the purpose of eig() is for handling general eigen-systems which have left and right eigenvectors (that could differ beyond transpose/conjugate). For this, I have two questions:
1. What's the history of NumPy adding this eig() routine? My guess would be NumPy added it because Matlab had it, but I couldn't tell from a quick commit search. 2. Would it be possible to deprecate/remove this API? From past discussions with users and developers, I found: - numpy.linalg.eig() only returns the right eigenvectors, so it's not very useful: * When the left eigenvectors are not needed --- which is the majority of the use cases --- eigh() is the right routine, but most users (especially those transitioning from Matlab) don't know it's there * When the left eigenvectors are needed, users have to use scipy.linalg.eig() anyway - A general support for eig() could be challenging (numerical issues), and doing SVDs instead is usually the better way out (in terms of both numerical stability and mathematical sense). Thanks, Leo _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- numpy-discussion@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to numpy-discussion-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/numpy-discussion.python.org/ Member address: arch...@mail-archive.com
