Re: [Gretl-users] Possible redundancy of some function packages?
On Thu, 6 Nov 2014, Henrique Andrade wrote:
Em 5 de novembro de 2005, Allin escreveu:
(...)
I won't go into all the specifics -- although I think you're right -- but
> rather I'll address the general issue here.
>
> We could really do with some editoral control over the function packages.
> Up till now we have been totally "laissez faire", but if the packages on
> the server are supposed to be a showcase for adding to gretl's built-in
> functionality they need to be pruned and consolidated. I wonder if we could
> assemble a committee of 2 or 3 members to work on this.
>
I would like to be one of them. I really like to test that kind of stuff :-)
I believe that the Polish team has already done some preparatory work in
that direction and it would be a shame it that gets wasted, so in my
opinion the best thing would be to join forces.
If nobody minds, I'd like to put forward a proposal: Henrique, Sven and
someone else (nominated by Tadeusz, Marcin and Paweł) become the package
maintenance team, with the following responsibilities:
* short run: classify packages with a set of criteria like the ones we've
been discussing so far, and make proposals about them (also in the light
of the expanding set of features that Hansl has been gaining over the
years). For example, Claudia's clustered_ols is IMO quite valuable in
terms of example script, while for example I wonder whether we really need
"cnumber" any longer, since a possible Hansl equivalent implementation may
reduce to the 7-liner
<hansl>
function scalar cnumber (matrix X "set a variables matrix")
matrix A = X ./ sqrt(sumc(X.^2))
matrix En = eigensym(A'A) # compute the roots of AA
scalar cn = sqrt(maxc(En)/minc(En))
printf "Condition Number = %12.2f\n",cn
return cn
end function
</hansl>
On the other hand, more complex stuff like HIP may become an add-on.
Sven's previous message was a very valuable start at this.
* medium run: verify that all the packages install and run the provided
example script on the widest possible assortment of OSes (various flavours
of Windows/Linux/OSX): perhaps, it'd be nice to have someone with some OSX
competence in the team, since I assume the people I mentioned can patrol
the Linux/Win territory quite well.
Of course, I don't mean to force anybody to do things they don't have time
for or don't feel like doing, so I don't want anybody to feel obliged.
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Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
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