Well, the distinction between the theory of probability and analysis is equally arbitrary. However it is a real-life fact that they form two separate branches of mathematics: different people work in these areas, they evolved substantially independently, though with some cross pollination, they use different terminology as characteristic functions vs. Fourier transforms, etc., etc. There is a good reason for the separation: the users of probability / statistics and of analysis form two distinct sets with a tiny intersection. The same is likely to happen with readers / users of Statistical Distribution and Special Functions parts of your manual. For example, in my seventeen years of experience with economic modeling, we worked every day with normal, log-normal, Poisson, Pareto, and many other distributions, but I cannot remember a singe case when a single researcher used spherical harmonics or elliptic integrals. Our economists, probably, never hear these words, and most likely even mathematicians all but completely forgot them. I can imagine easily my former colleagues intimidated by special functions when browsing documentation, and putting aside the library completely. A typical user of special functions hardly will be intimidated by statistical distributions, but more often than not he will regard this part of manual as a mildly distracting noise. Of course, gamma is gamma and beta is beta, but this message is about manual, not about codes. And, by the way, Pareto is not mentioned in the manual. Sincerely, Yura On 2/8/07, Paul A Bristow <pbristow@hetp.u-net.com> wrote:
I don't really see three parts. Any distinction between distributions and so-called special functions, or indeed the 'not-so-special' functions like log, exp sin is purely arbitrary: they are all math functions IMO. It is true that, in general, distribution functions use 'special functions' which in turn use 'not-so-special' functions, but IMO it would be confusing to try to divide them.
A review does indeed need input from various people with different areas of expertise, but I don't realy see how to avoid this. Hopefully they will just limit their comments to what they know about ;-)
There are also some serious practical problems about a retrospective division - not least the documentation, where we have worked quite hard to provide cross linking, and now over 250 pages as a pdf! Not to mention the code, cross function use, and common error handling etc.
Paul