Re: [boost] [Math] Does boost want constants?

From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-12-26 04:36:10

John Femiani wrote:
> I noticed one file
> (http://www.boost.org/boost/random/normal_distribution.hpp) asked for
> mathematical constants (pi, e, phi, etc) in boost.
>
>
>
> Which constants other than perhaps those would the boost community
> want?
> Is there interest in a library of mathematical constants?
>
>
>
> It also seems that there is no statistics library (i.e. functions to
> compute mean, variance, moments, skew, kurtosis, median, mode,
> quartiles, etc. from samples or histograms).    Would the boost
> community be interested in these sorts of functions?

There's some activity in this area:

Eric Neibler's accumuators lib is up for review: includes calculation of 
various statistics from sample data (mean variance etc): see the vault for 
code and docs.

Paul Bristow and I have been working on special functions / statistical 
distributions: www.johnmaddock.co.uk/toolkit.  This will let you perform 
statistical tests for significance etc once you have the basic stats.  I 
hope to get this in the review queue in a week or so (just polishing docs 
now).

Numeric constants have a long history around here: you should find some from 
Paul Bristow in the vault, and a few in the Math.Toolkit above, which we've 
deliberately avoided documenting!  The basic problem is that no one around 
here could agree on an interface :-(  It's one of those bicycle shed issues 
that we don't want to be held up by.

If you think you can cut through the design problems and satisfy the 
competing demands on numeric constants (look through the list archives and 
you should find lots of discussion) then go for it :-)

Otherwise I suspect Paul and I could always use more help on the toolit 
code: more of the TR1 special functions are needed (I have some notes that 
may be useful if that interests you), plus we could really use some "guinnea 
pig" testers/documentation checkers should anyone want to volunteer!

Cheers, John Maddock.