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statistics

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

Content:

  1. About
  2. Documentation
  3. Install statistics
  4. Provide feedback
  5. 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 was moved from SourceForge and Mercurial to GitHub and Git. Given the opportunity of this transition, the package has been redesigned, as compared to the its previous point 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. Documentation

All functions, class definitions, and their respective methods are documented with texinfo format, which can be accessed from the Octave command with the help function. Use dot notation to access the help of a particular method and new classdefs or the relative path for old style classes. For example:

help ClassificationKNN.predict
help @cvpartition/test

You can also find the entire documentation of the statistics package along with its function index at https://gnu-octave.github.io/statistics/. Alternatively, you can build the online documentation locally using the pkg-octave-doc package. Assuming both packages are installed and loaded, browse to any directory of your choice with write permission and run:

package_texi2html ("statistics")

3. Install statistics

To install the latest release (1.7.0) you need Octave (>=7.2.0) installed on your system. Install it by typing:

pkg install -forge statistics

You can automatically download and install the latest development version of the statistics package found here by typing:

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

If you need to install a specific older 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 all 452 1 functions and class definitions currently available and ensure that they work properly on your system.

4. 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.

5. Contribute

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

There are currently a few open issues that you can help fixing.

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 or implementing new functions. Improving the texinfo of the functions help files or adding BISTs and demos at the end of the function files is also important. Fixing a typo in the help file is still of value though. So don't hesitate to contribute! 👍

Footnotes

  1. Several functions are still missing from the statistics package, but you are welcome to contribute! ↩

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