setting hyper parameters of samplers

[martinjrobins]

After creating a pints.MCMCSampling object, how can you set the hyper parameters of the underlying method object? @MichaelClerx?

[MichaelClerx]

For Optimisation we have a method optimiser(): http://pints.readthedocs.io/en/latest/optimisers/running.html#pints.Optimisation.optimiser

We should probably add the same for MCMCSampling!

[martinjrobins]

ok cool, I'll add that

[mirams]

One of my favourite Chaste coding conventions is 'Methods should be Verbs'. So maybe we should have a get_ or something in front of optimiser()?

[martinjrobins]

yea, that is a reasonable convention, but probably should be a separate issue as it would involve lots of changes to apply the convention globally in pints. For the moment I'll add a method called samplers() in order to match optimiser()

[MichaelClerx]

We're currently using the "I don't like typing get_ all the time" convention. It probably has a nicer name, but I'm quite a fan of that! Happy to discuss though. Maybe best to see what other Python packages do

[MichaelClerx]

Update: Don't think it has a name. But

$ python
>>> dir(dict)
[..., 'clear', 'copy', 'fromkeys', 'get', 'has_key', 'items', 'iteritems', 'iterkeys', 'itervalues', 'keys', 'pop', 'popitem', 'setdefault', 'update', 'values', 'viewitems', 'viewkeys', 'viewvalues']

So clear, pop, and setdefault, but also items, and keys
Then again, I'd much prefer set_default, view_items etc. Python's code and standard library stuff can be a bit of a mess, naming-convention wise.

I quite like the "method-is-a-verb-except-for-get" convention, but interested to hear what other people think

[martinjrobins]

Yea, I'm kinda in the middle on this one. I am moving gradually away from using get_ for getters due to it being overly verbose and not playing nicely with auto-complete (I have to type 4 extra characters!!!!), but the whole "method-is-always-a-verb` is a nice clear and consistent convention to follow. Let me put it this way, I don't have the motivation to change what we already have, but I'm happy to go along if someone else does ;)