Re: Octave 4.4.0 and statistical functions

[Rik]

On 05/04/2018 09:00 AM, address@hidden wrote:

Subject:

Octave 4.4.0 and statistical functions

From:

José Luis García Pallero <address@hidden>

Date:

05/04/2018 12:41 AM

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Octave Maintainers <address@hidden>

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Hello:

I can see that there is not statistical functions in Octave 4.4.0. As
it is stated in the NEWS files a funch of functions were moved to the
statistics package of Octave-Forge. But I've downloaded the package
statistics-1.3.0 and it not containt for example normcdf(), normpdf()
and lots of other functions listed in the NEWS file. How can the users
of 4.4.0 get access to these functions?

On the other hand, what was the reason to move the statistical
functions to the octave forfe package? I think they should be remain
in the core distribution. I see the octave forge packages as very
specific functions with not so much users to justify its inclusion in
the core. But statistical functions are not this kind of code.

Actually, they are.  Most users do not need to generate a random number from the Wiebull distribution and thus wblrnd is meaningless to them (just one of the functions that was moved).  Octave is following Matlab's example and cleaning up the core namespace to have fewer functions.  The functions which remain should be of very broad utility such as mean() and fft().  Users in a particular discipline can import the functions they need with 'pkg load'.

The trouble seems to be that the functions were removed from core, but not moved in to the statistics package.  Checking the Octave Forge page for the statistics package (https://octave.sourceforge.io/statistics/index.html) shows that it was last updated in 2016.  I don't know if the package maintainer listed (Arno Onken) is still working on this package but I have CC'ed him on this email.  We simply need a new release of the statistics package where the functions listed in the NEWS file have been copied out of Mercurial and over to the statistics package.

--Rik