On Sunday, October 26, 2014 9:45:22 AM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0285/ <snipped> > Ben Finney wrote: > > > > I agree with the decision, because this isn't an issue which often leads > > to *incorrect* code. But I maintain that it's an unfortunate and > > needlessly confusing wart of the language. > > That puts you in the small but vocal minority :-)
I'm sure that as the author of stats module you know of 'sampling error'! Hint: There are two rather different populations to consider here for drawing the sample - pythonistas - textbook-istas Analogous to another oft-seen argument -- variables. A python variable is time-varying (like most programming languages) A python variable is not a mathematical variable. Historically: 1st HLL was FORTRAN which first introduced variables in trying to come closer to math (note the name FORmula TRANslator) Fortran's approximation was quite a good attempt for 1957. Less and less so as people understood the consequences. Until 1978 its creator was awarded for his creation and in his acceptance apologized for his mistakes -- Section 4 http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf tl;dr People make mistakes. Mistakes can be corrected ================== Of course 1. There are the logical operators and, xor 2. Put them into a certain config -- half-adder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adder_%28electronics%29#Half_adder 3. [Keep reading down]. .. full-adder 4. Ripple-carry adder : : 5. ALU ie Arithmetic Logic Unit IOW arithmetic/logic distinctions are fuzzy. "Distinctions are fuzzy" ≠ "Should not be made" [In my book!] -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list