| Re: Match Histogram Binsize with Data Type [message #83507 is a reply to message #83459] |
Thu, 07 March 2013 13:44   |
![Paul Van Delst[1] is currently offline](theme/default/images/xoffline.png.pagespeed.ic.XRkd1fkXye.png "Paul Van Delst[1] is currently offline")
Paul Van Delst[1]
Messages: 1157
Registered: April 2002
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Senior Member |
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On 03/07/13 13:12, David Fanning wrote:
> Paul van Delst writes:
>
>> If it makes you feel any better, I lay awake at night worrying about
>> plausibly incorrect results. In any language.
>
> Well, it *does* make me feel better. :-)
>
>> But, I don't really use IDL to produce quantitative results (computing
>> means and stddevs don't count)
>
> I was on a forum web page not too long ago and the folks there were
> going off on how horrible IDL was to do anything sensible and how it
> confounded expectations, was impossible for new people to learn, etc.
> Then some guy jumps in to say, 'Wait, there is a web site out there
> where the guy tries to fix all the things that are wrong with IDL.'
>
> It stopped me. Is that what I've been doing all these years? Fixing IDL?
>
> I suppose it is. And then I got totally depressed. Why do I do this
> work? And why do I do it for free, for God's sake!? I've no money in the
> bank, a job that pays very little, and I choose to spend my time fixing
> IDL. It's a joke.
Maybe. But I (personally) don't think so.
You've chosen not to "pivot". :o)
http://pragprog.com/magazines/2013-03/what-if-you-dont-want- to-pivot
And, based purely on this forum (and the one day when we met and shared
a beer), you certainly have lived a much more interesting life than most
people (especially if we restrict the criteria to the more, uh, senior
years of one's life! ha! :o).
I also wouldn't be too quick to discount the countless hours of
hair-pulling frustration you have saved many people via your
webpage/posts/library/etc. Karmic currency, you know? Doesn't help you
fiscally, but still...
> That's when I decided to go trekking in Patagonia. :-)
Perhaps that's the normal response for people caught in existential
cul-de-sacs? In the same vein, I go cycling in mountains somewhere (I
recommend Andalusia by the way...).
> Before I leave, though, I wrote my own histogram routine, cgHistogram,
> which I am just about to add to the Coyote Library. It fixes the bug
> with byte arrays (not fixed officially until IDL 8.2), checks to be sure
> the binsize data type matches the data type of the data you are binning,
> so you always get the correct results, allows for missing values in the
> histogram, will smooth the data if needed, and will return the relative
> frequency, instead of the histogram count, if you want that. It is a
> HELL of a lot better than the Histogram command, as always. Maybe one or
> two people will use it. ;-)
It won't put $$ in your account but: good one.
Enjoy your trek.
cheers,
paulv
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