Re: FYI: sum improved

[Søren Hauberg]

ons, 14 10 2009 kl. 07:52 +0200, skrev Jaroslav Hajek:
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Soren Hauberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> > tir, 13 10 2009 kl. 12:38 +0200, skrev Jaroslav Hajek:
> >> the built-in "sum" function was improved:
> >> http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/192d94cff6c1
> >
> > Nice :-) It's always great to see improvements to the basic stuff.
> >
> >> "sum" now accepts an 'extra' option that makes it use a special
> >> summation algorithm, compensating for loss of precision (slightly more
> >> sophisticated than the well-known Kahan's).
> >
> > The name of the 'extra' option seems somewhat odd to me. Perhaps it
> > should be called 'extra-precise', 'improve-accuracy', or something like
> > that?
> >
> 
> Well, since the option argument is currently only used to indicate
> summation precision ("native" or "double"), I thought "extra" was
> pretty good. I'm not against changing, but I would prefer a single
> word if possible ("compensated"?). Multiword options should probably
> use CamelCasing, like they do in many other functions.

Okay, I see the reason behind calling it 'extra'. My objection is simply
that I interpreted it is 'extra-double' or 'extra-native', which didn't
make that much sense to me. Since the word 'accurate' is used both in
the help text and in the title of the paper you followed, perhaps
'accurate' would be a good name of the option. 'compensated' also sounds
fine to me.

Soren