Clarify role of precision when specifying floats to `subspace`
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- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 150
- Forks
- 23
- Avg merge
- 1d 11h
- Merged PRs (30d)
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Description
From #799 we have seen that specifying a float data value to reference a coordinate value to a method that attempts to match it to some data in the (meta)data, such as subspace, may fail due to the natural unreliability of floating point precision due to rounding, e.g where matching to 0.123 fails but cf.isclose(0.123) will pass.
This isn't covered at all in the documentation, but can mean that users get unexpected results, like with that issue. So it is important to advertise that it is safest to use methods such as isclose when specifying float values if there is reasonable chance for rounding mismatch.
I recommend we clarify this, in (at least) two locations:
- in the docstrings of methods where float data values can be provided, which is at least
subspacebut perhaps includes other methods (to be investigated); - in the tutorial, as (I am thinking) a
warningbox with an example higlighting an example such as that from the linked Issue.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by locating the subspace docstring and the tutorial, then investigate other methods that accept float data values for coordinate matching. Document the precision risk and recommend isclose, with a warning example based on the issue; done means the relevant docstrings and tutorial explain how to avoid rounding mismatches.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- documentation
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 65/100