dojox.math could use a sum function

[foobarfighter]

Submitting a patch for a dojox.math.sum function.

[foobarfighter]

Patch for adding sum

[foobarfighter]

Use patch2.txt. It has the dojo doc comments in the right spot.

[Adam Peller]

dojox.lang.functional.reduce does this. Do we need a shortcut?

[foobarfighter]

ttrenka, it wouldn't have been obvious for me to use that function (especially since it's in another package where I wouldn't have looked) so I don't think it's a bad idea. I was also considering submitting a patch for dojox.math.avg, but my guess is that there might be something in dojox.math or dojox.lang for this as well.

What are your thoughts? I don't mind submitting the patch.

[Tom Trenka]

foobarfighter, I think you're right. While reduce can do this, it's not an obvious solution at all.

Some time ago we had a GSoC project that was supposed to be bringing statistical analysis functions to dojox.math but that sort of got canned; I think a list of simple functions such as sum, average, mean etc. would not be a bad idea to include directly with dojox.math (maybe dojox.math.stats or something).

If you'd like to work on this and submit a patch, I'll review and push as needed.

[Eugene Lazutkin]

Don't get me started on statistics and its current state in the JavaScript community. I cannot look without pity at all attempts to benchmark things, when people got some senseless numbers to begin with, and cannot even interpret them correctly.

We have to have a stat package. And I am not talking about something fancy, just some basic 101 functionality: average, median, percentiles, deviations, curves, the simplest 5 number summary for goodness sake.

And we have to have a benchmarking facility on par with DOH. With proper charts.

[Tom Trenka]

This was added with the new dojox.math.stats package.