Message 333135 - Python tracker

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Author	DavidMertz
Recipients	DavidMertz, dcasmr, eric.smith, maheshwark97, mark.dickinson, steven.daprano
Date	2019-01-07.03:57:41
SpamBayes Score	-1.0
Marked as misclassified	Yes
Message-id	<1546833461.88.0.753365697707.issue33084@roundup.psfhosted.org>
In-reply-to

Content
I believe that the current behavior of `statistics.median[\|_low\|_high\]` is simply broken. It relies on the particular behavior of Python sorting, which only utilizes `.__lt__()` between objects, and hence does not require a total order. I can think of absolutely no way to characterize these as reasonable results: Python 3.7.1 \| packaged by conda-forge \| (default, Nov 13 2018, 09:50:42) >>> statistics.median([9, 9, 9, nan, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) 1 >>> statistics.median([9, 9, 9, nan, 1, 2, 3, 4]) nan

I believe that the current behavior of `statistics.median[|_low|_high\]` is simply broken.  It relies on the particular behavior of Python sorting, which only utilizes `.__lt__()` between objects, and hence does not require a total order.

I can think of absolutely no way to characterize these as reasonable results:

Python 3.7.1 | packaged by conda-forge | (default, Nov 13 2018, 09:50:42)
>>> statistics.median([9, 9, 9, nan, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
1
>>> statistics.median([9, 9, 9, nan, 1, 2, 3, 4])
nan

History
Date	User	Action	Args
2019-01-07 03:57:43	DavidMertz	set	recipients: + DavidMertz, mark.dickinson, eric.smith, steven.daprano, maheshwark97, dcasmr
2019-01-07 03:57:41	DavidMertz	set	messageid: <1546833461.88.0.753365697707.issue33084@roundup.psfhosted.org>
2019-01-07 03:57:41	DavidMertz	link	issue33084 messages
2019-01-07 03:57:41	DavidMertz	create