-----Original Message----- From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of John Femiani Sent: 23 December 2006 21:06 To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: [boost] [Math] Does boost want constants?
I noticed one file (http://www.boost.org/boost/random/normal_distribution.hpp) asked for mathematical constants (pi, e, phi, etc) in boost.
Which constants other than perhaps those would the boost community want? Is there interest in a library of mathematical constants?
My proposal to provide a set of these was rejected some years ago because of the difficulty of agreeing how to package them in a sufficiently user friendly way. The state of the discussions in May 2005 is attached. Here is a link to my collection of accurate constants in the boost vault http://tinyurl.com/wc3wl. But I note with the very recent renewed progress of typeof, it may be that a solution can be found that is acceptable to enough Boosters to get acceptance. I remain certain that a collection of constants would be very useful.
It also seems that there is no statistics library (i.e. functions to compute mean, variance, moments, skew, kurtosis, median, mode, quartiles, etc. from samples or histograms). Would the boost community be interested in these sorts of functions?
John Maddock is also polishing up the documentation for his Math Toolkit which now includes nearly all the statistical distributions one could reasonably want (including calculation of their moments etc). This will go into the review queue very soon. Once the tedious crafting of docs is done, I am sure attention with turn to the aspects you mention, and integration with Eric Neibler's accumulator concept. I agree that these are fundamental tools that Boost should offer. Paul --- Paul A Bristow Prizet Farmhouse, Kendal, Cumbria UK LA8 8AB +44 1539561830 & SMS, Mobile +44 7714 330204 & SMS pbristow@hetp.u-net.com