Re: Built-in binning functions

On 31 August 2014 20:44, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower(at)archidevsys(dot)co(dot)nz> wrote:
> On 01/09/14 06:00, Tom Lane wrote:
>>
>> Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>>>
>>> Suggest discretize() as a much more informative name. The other names
>>> will be overlooked by anybody that doesn't already know what to look
>>> for.
>>
>> I did not like that idea to begin with, but it's growing more attractive.
>> In particular, I think it would be unique enough that we could safely
>> mark the polymorphic function as variadic (a move that would cause
>> ambiguity issues for pretty nearly any user-defined function of the
>> same name).
>>
>> OTOH, I'm not as convinced as you that this name would mean anything
>> to "anybody that doesn't already know what to look for". It still
>> seems like rather arcane terminology.
>>
>>
> If I was new to PostgreSQL, I'd probably read this as disc*(), a function to
> do something with discs.
>
> I have done finite maths and statistics at university, plus I have been
> vaguely following this thread - but, the meaning of discretize() is not
> immediately apparent to me (if I reread a previous email or 2 in this
> thread, then I'm sure it would then be obvious!). I might guess that it is
> to make something discrete, but why would I want to do that? So if I came
> across this function in a year or 2, I'd probably go right past it.
>
> I have been programming for over 40 years, and I still find choosing
> appropriate names sometimes very difficult, so I know it is not easy to come
> up with meaningful names - especially ones that mean something relevant to
> other people!

It's important that we *don't* come up with a new name.

This function does something useful and the words people already use
to describe that are binning and discretization. By this I mean names
already used by very widely used software. Search them and see, or
suggest more widely used alternatives, please.