Re: [boost] seeking endorsement for histogram library

Dear Fabian,

On 13. Nov 2017, at 18:59, Fabian Bösch via Boost wrote:

The histogram classes look quite useful, especially the property that you can add histograms and thus accumulate data in parallel is important in many scientific contexts.

yes, right! :) I also mention that use case in the user guide. :)

Did you also intend to provide estimates of mean, variance and possibly higher order statistical moments of the whole distribution? This can be achieved with so-called on-line algorithms (even in the multi-variate case) and would help to get more information about your data. This can also be implemented such that the summation of histograms still work (and probably also the scaling).

assuming I understand you correctly, then I think the functionality of computing moments on-line is already in Boost.Accumulators, see http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_65_1/doc/html/accumulators/user_s_guide.html... The histogram library has a weak overlap in scope with Boost.Accumulators, but mostly they are complementary. There is a section in the rationale about on this point: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/HDembinski/histogram/html/... Best regards, Hans