Re: possible glitches [was: Patch for new "stats" command]

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Sunday 08 November 2009, Philipp K. Janert wrote:
> 
> Regarding binary and matrix data: If you look at the
> documentation, you will notice that we dont' claim
> to support either binary nor matrix data. I guess
> we should have been more explicit about flagging
> those keywords as errors on the command line.

Binary data is important, I think.
You should get binary support for free since you are calling
df_readline(), which already knows how to deal with binary input.

I think the glitch is not because it's binary, but because it's
an array of data values.  For the purpose of finding min/max/mean
we don't care about that, but the program returns the values
internally via column 3 rather than column 1.  
I think... I get confused every time I have to use a "using" statement
with matrix or array input data.


> How important is the matrix format overall, and in particular
> outside of splot?

Doesn't have anything to do with splot.

Think about setting the color palette for a 2D heat map based
on the stats of the data being displayed.  As the program is
now, you can set the cbrange manually based on prior knowledge
or you can autoscale to the full min/max range.  It would be
very much in the spirit of your "stats" patch to facilitate
setting the cbrange based on mean/stddev.

	Ethan