/statistics

The Statistics package for GNU Octave

Primary LanguageMATLABOtherNOASSERTION

statistics

This is the official repository for the Statistics package for GNU Octave.

Content:

  1. About
  2. Install statistics
  3. Provide feedback
  4. Contribute

1. About

The statistics package is a collection of functions for statistical analysis. As with GNU Octave, the statistics package aims to be mostly compatible with MATLAB's equivalent Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox. However, this is not always applicable of even possible. Hence, identical (in name) functions do not necessarily share the same functionality or behavior. Nevertheless, they produce consistent and correct results, unless there is a bug: see Murphy's Law 😄.

As of 10.6.2022, the developemnt of the statistics package has move from SourceForge and Mercurial to GitHub and Git. Given the opportunity of this transition, the package has been redesinged, as compared to the its previous last release 1.4.3 at SourceForge, with the aim to keep its structure simplified and easier to maintain. To this end, two major decisions have been made:

  • Keep a single dependency to the last two major point releases of GNU Octave.
  • Deprecate old functions once their fully Matlab compatible equivalents are implemented.

2. Install statistics

To install the current development version you need Octave (>=6.1.0) installed on your system.

You may download the latest development version of the statistics package here and install it by typing:

pkg install statistics-main.zip

or alternatively type:

pkg install "https://github.com/gnu-octave/statistics/archive/refs/heads/main.zip"

to download and install it.

If you need to install a specific release, for example 1.4.2, type:

pkg install "https://github.com/gnu-octave/statistics/archive/refs/tags/release-1.4.2.tar.gz"

After installation, type:

  • pkg load statistics to load the statistics package.
  • news statistics to review all the user visible changes since last version.
  • pkg test statistics to run a test suite for all1 functions in the package and ensure that they work properly on your system.

3. Provide feedback

You are encouraged to provide feedback regarding possible bugs, missing features2, discrepancies or incompatibilities with Matlab functions. You may open an issue to open a discussion to your particular case. Please, do NOT use the issue tracker for requesting help. Use the discourse group for requesting help with using functions and programming in Octave.

Please, make sure that when reporting a bug you provide as much information as possible for other users to be able to replicate it. Use markdown tips to make your post clear and easy to read and understand your issue.

4. Contribute

The statistics package is open source! Everyone is welcome to contribute.

If you find a bug and fix it, just clone this repo with git clone https://github.com/gnu-octave/statistics.git, make your changes and add a pull request. Alternatively, you may open an issue and add a git-patch file, which will be patched by the maintainer.

Make sure you follow the coding style already used in the statistics package (similar to GNU Octave). For a summary of the coding style rules used in the package see Contribute.

Contributing is not only about fixing bugs. Improving the texinfo of the fucntions help files or adding BISTs and demos at the end of the function files is also important. There are currently 54 functions missing BISTs and it would be invaluable to add tests to these. Fixing a typo in the help file is still of value though. So don't hesitate to contribute! 👍

Footnotes

  1. Some functions are missing BISTs, these are not included in the test suite. But you are welcome to contribute! ↩

  2. Don't open an issues just for requesting a missing function! Immplement it yourself and make an invaluable contribution 😇 ↩