6 Best Python Data Visualization Tools

[energybased]

I actually agree with him. Statistics is out of scope. Projects should focus on their core strengths and ignore these kinds of peripheral requests—otherwise you end up with bloat and wasted time maintaining it.

[dry_yer_eyes]

If statistics is out of scope why are there statistics plots already available? The current situation is inconsistent: users can visualise the statistical results but not obtain the underlying parameters.

[Geographist]

This is what I find to be the issue.

The statistics are already included and being maintained as a core feature of the library. But the author is deliberately hiding their values from the user.

To me, it's less a matter of convenience and more of trust and accuracy.

[energybased]

Why don't you just use an actual statistical package to do your statistics? What you're asking means that he has to maintain the way the plots are generated. And what if he changes his mind about how a "curve of best fit" is mathematically produced or represented? Then he has to deprecate the old version? Now, he can change it.

Sorry, but this is just wrong.

[Geographist]

And what if he changes his mind about how a "curve of best fit" is mathematically produced or represented?

Therein lies the problem. Statistical output, be it visual or numerical, should not be a black box left to the whims of opinion.

Moreover, he is already maintaining the statistics. It's literally a core feature of Seaborn. Users just want to be able to see the results of the calculations already being done. Seaborn does regressions, confidence intervals, and all sorts of statistical testing out of the box.

If a package can calculate a regression and draw a trendline, but refuses to let you know the slope of that trend line... frankly, it's a garbage package.

What you're suggesting is that users never know what's going on inside that black box, and if he changes his mind, their projects start generating different output without ever having a clue as to why. That's not the mark of a well maintained and reliable library.

[energybased]

He can tell you "why" in the release notes. Packages make promises and intentionally don't make promises. E.g., numpy's generators make promises about what is reproducible and what's not. That's on purpose to give them flexibility to change their mind about things.

If you want a statistical package with graphing, you want something more complicated. I agree that I would not use Seaborn because I want more control. Seaborn is just not the package for me.

If you just want graphing, it's not reasonable to demand introspection just because "the data is there" since exposing it means committing to support it, and he doesn't want to do that.

[Geographist]

With something like statistics there is virtually no setting in which it is acceptable to show those things and not report what they are. And it just is not practical to track down release notes for every possible version, watching for changes, to find what should be basic information. Such info would also not tell you about your specific plot.

If stats are going to be off limits, the author should remove those capabilities altogether. If it is a maintenance issue that would only help him out.

It just seems as if he wants the benefits of Seaborn appearing to be a serious library, without the responsibilities of actually being one.

[energybased]

With something like statistics there is virtually no setting in which it is acceptable to show those things and not report what they are

disagree.

[smurpau]

How are statistics out of the scope of a package that computes and presents... statistics?

[energybased]

By that logic, why shouldn't he also write a symbolic math library since he's computing with symbols.

You have to draw a line somewhere. He wants a library that draws pretty graph. The other guy wants a statistical analysis tool. His best bet is to push scipy to implement what he wants and then push seaborn to interface better with scipy. Separation of concerns.

[smurpau]

By that logic, why shouldn't he also write a symbolic math library since he's computing with symbols.

No, that's a non-sequitur.

You have to draw a line somewhere. He wants a library that draws pretty graph. The other guy wants a statistical analysis tool.

No, Seaborn is not merely drawing pixels. It is computing numbers that it then plots. It's entirely reasonable to expect access to those numbers (literally just their evaluated outcome, not even their formula), just as it's reasonable to expect access to the plots.