[Numpy-discussion] Rationale for atleast_3d

[Sebastian Haase]

On Friday 22 September 2006 12:57, Travis Oliphant wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
> >26 weeks, 4 days, 2 hours and 9 minutes ago, Zdeněk Hurák asked why
> >atleast_3d acts the way it does:
> >http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.numeric.general/4382/match=atle
> >ast+3d
> >
> >He doesn't seem to have gotten any answers.  And now I'm wondering the
> >same thing.  Anyone have any idea?
>
> This function came from scipy and was written by somebody at Enthought.
> I was hoping they would respond.   The behavior of atleast_3d does make
> sense in the context of atleast_2d and thinking of 3-d arrays as
> "stacks" of 2-d arrays where the stacks are in the last dimension.
>
> atleast_2d converts 1-d arrays to 1xN  arrays
>
> atleast_3d converts 1-d arrays to 1xNx1 arrays so that they can be
> "stacked" in the last dimension.  I agree that this isn't consistent
> with the general notion of "pre-pending" 1's to increase the
> dimensionality of the array.
>
> However,  array(a, copy=False, ndmin=3)  will always produce arrays with
> a 1 at the begining.  So at_least3d is convenient if you like to think
> of 3-d arrays of stacks of 2-d arrays where the last axis is the
> "stacking" dimension.
>
I'm working with "stacks of 2d arrays" -- but I was always under the 
impression that -- since the last axis is the "fastest"  -- "stacks of 
<something>" should stack in the first dimension  -- not the last --so that 
the members of the stack still remain contiguous is memory.

Is there a general consensus on how one should look at this ?  Or are there 
multiple incompatible view -- maybe coming from different fields -- ?

-Sebastian