[Numpy-discussion] Matrix vs array in ma.minimum

[Pierre GM]

On Jan 14, 2010, at 11:06 PM, David Cournapeau wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Pierre GM <pgmdevlist@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 14, 2010, at 8:52 PM, David Cournapeau wrote:
>>> Pierre GM wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Er, no.
>>>> np.ma.minimum(a, b) returns the lowest value of a and b element-wsie, or the the lowest element of a is b is None. The behavior is inherited from the very first implementation of maskedarray in numeric. This itself is unexpected, since np.minimum requires at least 2 input arguments.
>>>> 
>>>> As you observed, the current function breaks down w/ np.matrix objects when only one argument is given (and when the axis is None): we call umath.minimum.reduce on the ravelled matirx, which returns the ravelled matrix. One would expect a scalar, so yes, this behavior is also unexpected.
>>>> 
>>>> Now, which way should we go ? Keep np.ma.minimum as it is (fixing the bug so that a scalar is returned if the function is called with only 1 argument and an axis  None) ? Adapt it to match np.minimum ?
>>> 
>>> I am not a user of Masked Array, so I don't know what is the most
>>> desirable behavior.
>> 
>> I'm not a regular user of np.minimum.
> 
> Damn, I thought I coul
>> 
>>> The problem appears when using pylab.imshow on
>>> matrices, because matplotlib (and not matlab :) ) uses masked arrays
>>> when normalizing the values.
>> 
>> 
>> David, you mind pointing me to the relevan part of the code and/or give me an example ?
> 
> Here is a self-contained example reproducing the matplotlib pb:
> 


OK, thx a lot. I'll work on it as soon as I can.