Re: [boost] Review of the Accumulators Library

From: Tom Brinkman (reportbase_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-02-07 02:07:56

>> The design is complex, but not needlessly so. Take the "pass an array to
>> a function" design, and think about how you might answer the following
>> questions:

>> - What if you wanted the function to calculate 5 different statistics,
>> specified by you, and you want to call the function once, not 5 times.

>> - What if some of those statistics shared some intermediate partial
>> results? You would want the function to only calculate them once, right?

Yes, I see your point.  Maybe you could show and compare the two styles
and where each is appropriate in the "getting started" portion
of the documentation.

John Maddock's statistic's library, which is also
in the "review queue" presumably will have some overlap with the
"accumulators"
statistics library.  Do you see this as an issue that would need to be
addressed.
How familiar are you with John's library?   I wonder what the result would
be if
two of boost's best statisticians/mathmaticians got
together on a design (one can only dream).

I'm also interested your "data-series" library.  I download it a few weeks
ago,
but it had some dependencies on libraries not currently in the boost
distribution and
I was unable to compile it.  I did quickly read the documentation however
and it
looks to be built upon some of the same concepts of "accumulators" library.

I suspect that the idea behind the two libraries (accumulators and
data-series)
evolved together, given their similar characteristics of how they
handle intermediate values. (5 day-moving average of a 10-day moving
average kind-of stuff).  I have a background in data-series analysis
and I'll make an effort to contribute in a more meaningful way when
that one comes up for review.