On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 5:14 PM, Sebastian <se...@sebix.at> wrote: > > On 2014-10-12 16:54, Warren Weckesser wrote: >> >> >> On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 7:57 AM, Robert Kern <robert.k...@gmail.com >> <mailto:robert.k...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 11:51 PM, Warren Weckesser >> <warren.weckes...@gmail.com <mailto:warren.weckes...@gmail.com>> >> wrote: >> >> > A small wart in this API is the meaning of >> > >> > shuffle(a, independent=False, axis=None) >> > >> > It could be argued that the correct behavior is to leave the >> > array unchanged. (The current behavior can be interpreted as >> > shuffling a 1-d sequence of monolithic blobs; the axis argument >> > specifies which axis of the array corresponds to the >> > sequence index. Then `axis=None` means the argument is >> > a single monolithic blob, so there is nothing to shuffle.) >> > Or an error could be raised. >> > >> > What do you think? >> >> It seems to me a perfectly good reason to have two methods instead of >> one. I can't imagine when I wouldn't be using a literal True or False >> for this, so it really should be two different methods. >> >> >> >> I agree, and my first inclination was to propose a different method >> (and I had the bikeshedding conversation with myself about the name: >> "disarrange", "scramble", "disorder", "randomize", "ashuffle", some >> other variation of the word "shuffle", ...), but I figured the first >> thing folks would say is "Why not just add options to shuffle?" So, >> choose your battles and all that. >> >> What do other folks think of making a separate method > I'm not a fan of more methods with similar functionality in Numpy. It's > already hard to overlook the existing functions and all their possible > applications and variants. The axis=None proposal for shuffling all > items is very intuitive. > > I think we don't want to take the path of matlab: a huge amount of > powerful functions, but few people know of their powerful possibilities.
I totally agree with this principle, but I think this is an exception to the rule, b/c unfortunately in this case the function that we *do* have is weird and inconsistent with how most other functions in numpy work. It doesn't vectorize! Cf. 'sort' or how a 'shuffle' gufunc (k,)->(k,) would work. Also, it's easy to implement the current 'shuffle' in terms of any 1d shuffle function, with no explicit loops, Warren's disarrange requires an explicit loop. So, we really implemented the wrong one, oops. What this means going forward, though, is that our only options are either to implement both behaviours with two functions, or else to give up on have the more natural behaviour altogether. I think the former is the lesser of two evils. Regarding names: shuffle/permutation is a terrible naming convention IMHO and shouldn't be propagated further. We already have a good naming convention for inplace-vs-sorted: sort vs. sorted, reverse vs. reversed, etc. So, how about: scramble + scrambled shuffle individual entries within each row/column/..., as in Warren's suggestion. shuffle + shuffled to do what shuffle, permutation do now (mnemonic: these break a 2d array into a bunch of 1d "cards", and then shuffle those cards). permuted remains indefinitely, with the docstring: "Deprecated alias for 'shuffled'." -n -- Nathaniel J. Smith Postdoctoral researcher - Informatics - University of Edinburgh http://vorpus.org _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
