Additional Math functions

Eli Perelman eli at eliperelman.com
Thu Oct 1 22:51:47 UTC 2015


Reviving this thread, doing any type of simple statistics is more verbose
than it probably needs to be as calculating sums, averages, etc. makes most
resort to Array reduction. I understand the need for methods such as
`Math.hypot(...values)`, but for ECMAScript to evolve to be useful in
statistics programming without needing to resort to R would definitely also
be a nice-to-have. I'm sure there are many statistical functions you
*could* add, but at a bare minimum, it would be useful:

Math.sum(...values) or Math.summation(...values)
Math.mean(...values) // Spelling out mean here is succinct while still
intentional, instead of .avg
Math.variance(...values)
Math.stddev(...values)

Obviously some of these can be computed from the results of others, but I
think the convenience and intent of the methods, not to mention their wide
usefulness outweigh the concern of Math bloat. Thoughts?

P.S. Definitely not against even more core stats methods, but have to start
somewhere. :)

Eli Perelman
Mozilla
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