Re: Removing broadcasting from Octave

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 15 December 2011 10:37, Judd Storrs <address@hidden> wrote:
> 2011/12/15 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
>> 2011/12/15 Søren Hauberg <address@hidden>:
>>> tor, 15 12 2011 kl. 02:42 -0500, skrev Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso:
>>>> Can we change the wording? I really think "broadcasting" is a clearer
>>>> term instead of having to expand the BSX acronym... or perhaps the
>>>> reference to bsxfun will make people look up that function?
>>>
>>> Just a note from the ignorant: I really don't understand the word
>>> "broadcasting" -- to me it sounds like something related to television
>>> or networking.
>>
>> A broadcast is when something is spread out, expanded, copied and
>> multiplied, like EM waves spread from one antenna to many others to
>> reach viewers. A vector can be broadcast across a matrix when added,
>> or two vectors can be broadcast across each other to obtain a matrix.
>
> If you sat down to describe this to anyone you would never use the
> word "broadcast". It's quite a boring and confusing phrase for an
> exciting feature.

Well, I thought it was an improvement over BSX, and I was following
Numpy's cue, because that's what they call it. I'm ok with coming up
with a different term than either Matlab or Numpy. It looks like R
calls this recycling:

    http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.html#The-recycling-rule

But broadcasting is a much-touted feature of Numpy. I tried looking
for an equivalent concept in Scilab, and I couldn't find it.

So, BSX, broadcasting, recycling, or our own word. This comes to mind:

    http://xkcd.com/927/

I was going by the most famous of those, because much e-ink has been
spilled in the blogosphere over the wonders of Numpy broadcasting.

- Jordi G. H.