Daniel Lakeland wrote:
> On Fri, May 25, 2007 at 08:52:16PM +0200, Andrej Vodopivec wrote:
>
>> On 5/25/07, Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 5/24/07, Andrej Vodopivec <andrej.vodopivec at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Function names should be suggestive.
>>>>
>>> Yes, nintegrate certainly is suggestive, isn't it?
>>>
> ...
>
>> The name stands for numeric integratation. It is taken from
>> Mathematica. When I said that I didn't want it to do whatever it can
>> to get the best result I meant that it shouldn't use symbolic
>> integration because it is not a numeric method.
>>
>
> basically, nintegrate implies an expert system to identify a method
> which should be applicable to a particular problem, and carry that
> method out.
>
> This is convenient for a large number of problems which are generally
> easy to numerically integrate. It is of course disastrous if you give
> it a problem where the method chosen gives a wrong answer.
>
> A routine called "nintegrate" should be rather conservative and
> extremely robust against a wide variety of inputs. A routine called
> qp_integrate or something similar can safely assume that the user is
> aware that the method will be quadpack, and that the types of problems
> and errors that will be encountered are those related to quadpack.
>
No! no no Why do you think that a user must understand quadpack just to
do numerical integration?
Are you making software only for specialist to use?
If you name it qp_integration then the general user would never guess
what that name means.
I have no idea what quad pack is and I don't think I want to but I might
ask my students do do numerical integration using a first order
approximation method or etc.
Just my 2c worth but I am only a user so...
Doug
> I think the concern among the group is just that the standards that
> are implied by "nintegrate" are higher than the standards of quadpack.
>
>
>