On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 10:55 PM, Nathaniel Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Christopher Jordan-Squire > <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 11:14 PM, Robert Kern <[email protected]> wrote: >>> On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 22:07, Christopher Jordan-Squire <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> So in the mean time, are there any suggestions for what this R sample >>>> function should be called, since random.sample is apparently taken? >>> >>> If you default to size=1 (which you probably should anyways), then >>> np.random.choice() makes sense, in analogy to random.choice() from the >>> standard library. >>> >> Alright. I can make that change tomorrow. I'd prefer np.sample in the >> long-run, for compatibility with R. (False friends are loathsome >> things.) How does one petition to get function names deprecated? > > I was about to argue that "random.choice" was a better name anyway, > but then I remembered that the standard library "random.sample" exists > and does something similar. So instead I'd like to argue that making > this compatible with Python is more important than making it > compatible with R :-). > > Specifically, 'np.random.sample(array_like, k)', with no further > arguments, should perform random sampling *without* replacement. > Ideally it should also efficiently handle the case where array_like is > an xrange object. Docs are here: > http://docs.python.org/library/random.html >
I mentioned this at the end of my initial response to Josef. I agree that my use of sample is more consistent with the python random library's usage, except that I don't want to have the same name but a different default. I think that also counts as a 'false friend'. So I think np.random.choice is a better name for right now. Simpler to have the same function with the same defaults but a different name than the same function with the same name and different defaults. -Chris > -- Nathaniel > _______________________________________________ > NumPy-Discussion mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion > _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list [email protected] http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
