That's really interesting. I did not know there were so many way to consider quantiles. Maybe we should indeed wait for numpy to take a decision on the matter and go with their default choice so we remain consistent with the ecosystem?
2018-03-16 5:36 GMT+01:00 Stephen J. Turnbull < turnbull.stephen...@u.tsukuba.ac.jp>: > Steven D'Aprano writes: > > > Indeed. I've been considering quantiles and quartiles for a long time, > > and I've found at least ten different definitions for quantiles and > > sixteen for quartiles. > > My take is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." > Quantiles are used a lot for "government work". Pick a definition > that's good enough for that. > > Pick one that is commonly used and has nice invariance properties if > any are applicable (e.g., quartile1(list) == quartile3(reversed(list), > although I'm not even sure that is appropriate!), document it > carefully, and give (some) examples of the edge cases that affect > comparability of the statistics module's computation to alternative > formulae. > > I'd like to see your list written up. To my mind, it would be of > enough general interest that you could probably publish the results of > your research in a political science or maybe psychology journal, or a > statistics journal oriented to practitioners and/or educators[1]. I'm > not suggesting you should do the work involved in actually submitting > unless there's benefit to you in it, I'm just saying I think it's that > interesting. > > Regards, > > Steve > > > Footnotes: > [1] I'd find it useful in talking to my students about trusting > computers, for one thing. > > _______________________________________________ > Python-ideas mailing list > Python-ideas@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >
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