Re: Tips for writing correct, non trivial Mathematica Libraries
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg124476] Re: Tips for writing correct, non trivial Mathematica Libraries
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:13:50 -0500 (EST)
- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
Why _should_ a "new user" expect geom[s] to return s when s is a scalar rather than a list? After all, a lion is not the same thing as a lion in a cage! Whether a function whose natural domain consists of lists should coerce a scalar into a one-element list is purely a matter of convenience. That the built-in GeometricMean does do that whereas the documentation's example geom does not is perhaps just a sloppy oversight in constructing that example. On 1/20/12 1:46 AM, l.i.b. wrote: > Thanks for your comments. My followups are inlined below: > >>> ** Take for example the following: (Taken from the mathematica 8 >>> virtual book section "Applying Functions to Lists and Other >>> Expressions") >>> geom[list_] := Apply[Times, list]^(1/Length[list]) >>> So, this does a bad thing for geom[ x+ y] (returns (Sqrt[x y]) >> >> What were you expecting here? This looks correct to me > > > the snippet for 'geom' is taken for the mathematica tutorial, and is > meant to show the user how to define a function that implements the > geometric mean. so for instance, > geom[{x,y,z}] = (x y z )^(1/3). But geom[x+y] treats the expression > as a list and returns Sqrt[x y], which is not what a new user would > expect ( a better answer would be x+y) > > > >> >>> The built-in function GeometricMean properly complains when given >>> this input, >> > > I'm saying GeometricMean does not get fooled by GeometricMean[x+y], > which means the author thought of how to protect it from doing the > wrong thing -- and it would be nice to see exactly what syntax they > used. -- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305
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