mini / maxi functions



Stavros Macrakis escribi?:
> Maxima functions should have clear, simple, and universal semantics. 
>  Though I do understand why column-wise min can be useful when 
> matrices are used to represent datasets, I find it poor practice to 
> overload that functionality on a function generically called 'mini'. 
>  Why not col_min and row_min?
I can assume the name of the function was not a good choice.

> As for the expectations of users working in a statistical context, 
> I'll point out that in R, min(matrix(1:4,2,2)) = 
> min(data.frame(a=1:2,b=3:4)) = 1, NOT a column-wise minimum*,
When I worked multivariate data with R, my first piece of code was to 
define column-wise functions for vector means, extrema, etc. With such 
functions, I could easily replicate the same calculations I found in 
text books. I expected R to have this behavior by default.

--
Mario