[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Re: "Accumulate" in Mathematica 6

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg82818] Re: "Accumulate" in Mathematica 6
• From: Thomas E Burton <tburton at brahea.com>
• Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:22:59 -0500 (EST)

Perhaps Wolfram will speak for themselves. My take is this:  
Accumulating a list of numbers seems to be about 3 times faster  than  
the alternative using FoldList. This application is very common,  
perhaps justifying this new, apparently redundant specialized  
function. And as you suggest, for the other applications, FoldList 
[f,e1,g[e2,e3]] is equivalent to version 1's Accumulate[f,g 
[e1,e2,e3]]. So version 6 seems to offer a decent compromise.

It also seems to me that one objective of version 6 is to broaden  
appeal by lessening idiosyncrasies. To reintroduce version 1's  
idiosyncratic take on "accumulate" would seem counterproductive.

> Maybe I'm missing something here - but what was the rationale  
> behind re-implementing "Accumulate" in such a restricted version now?