4 ms·

Num command – new tool for simple statistics

11 points by jph 11y ago

http://www.numcommand.com and Twitter @NumCommand Num is a command line tool for mathematics and statistics data processing. Num can calculate sum, median, quartiles, standard deviation, and much more. Num is free open source, runs on any Unix system, and includes code libraries in Awk. The site has a tutorial, FAQ, and notes on related command line tools, R/CRAN and Python/pandas, datamash and qstats. There's a Kickstarter link if you want to fund. I'm the author and happy to answer questions about Num.

trcollinson 11y ago
I find the idea of you funding this via kickstarter really interesting. So, you're looking to get $1000 which, if all goes well you will have in 3 days. What exactly do you plan to use the $1000 for? How do you see this pushing the project forward? Where are you hoping to go from here?
- jph 11y ago
  Thank you. Yes, I'm aiming to raise $1000, and we have 93% so far with 3 days to go. Kickstarter is really interesting to me for encouraging creativity; I personally fund many nonprofit projects at $1 akin to a thank you tip jar. I also donate more directly to long term open source projects. I'm trying the Kickstarter for Num as an experiment. The $1000 goal is covering some of my time to push the project forward, from a little hobby program to a real general purpose tool. Top improvements are adding descriptive stats (e.g. skewness, kurtosis), IO options (e.g. comma separated values, floating point precision), documentation (e.g. tutorial guide, helper guide), contactability (e.g. dedicated accounts on GitHub, Twitter), etc. Where I'm hoping to go from here is getting Num in the hands of more people, especially for developers, sysadmins, and hackers who want a quick way to do stats. Num is a great candidate for Unix distros because it's lightweight, simple, and runs on so many systems.
brudgers 11y ago
How does it compare to GNU Octave or J?
- jph 11y ago
  Num is much simpler than GNU Octave or J. Num takes command line input, such as file of numbers or a standard input pipe, and outputs common statistics. Num has a goal to be similar to Unix standard tools such as sed, awk, and wc. We're working to make Num fully POSIX compatible so we can write fully portable scripts. GNU Octave and J are full featured languages, with excellent data structures, and you can do much more in these environments. R/CRAN and Python/pandas are similarly powerful. These all require installations of binaries or compilers, and involve ongoing updates of versions, libraries, dependencies, and the like. Why use Num? Num is great when you're writing a shell script and you want a lightweight way to do simple statistics. Num is great when you want your script to be able to run on a wide range of standard systems and be able to run as is for a long time. For example, we use Num for our system monitoring scripts, continuous delivery processing, and Ansible deployments.

11 points by jph 11y ago

trcollinson 11y ago

I find the idea of you funding this via kickstarter really interesting. So, you're looking to get $1000 which, if all goes well you will have in 3 days. What exactly do you plan to use the $1000 for? How do you see this pushing the project forward? Where are you hoping to go from here?

jph 11y ago
Thank you. Yes, I'm aiming to raise $1000, and we have 93% so far with 3 days to go. Kickstarter is really interesting to me for encouraging creativity; I personally fund many nonprofit projects at $1 akin to a thank you tip jar. I also donate more directly to long term open source projects. I'm trying the Kickstarter for Num as an experiment. The $1000 goal is covering some of my time to push the project forward, from a little hobby program to a real general purpose tool. Top improvements are adding descriptive stats (e.g. skewness, kurtosis), IO options (e.g. comma separated values, floating point precision), documentation (e.g. tutorial guide, helper guide), contactability (e.g. dedicated accounts on GitHub, Twitter), etc. Where I'm hoping to go from here is getting Num in the hands of more people, especially for developers, sysadmins, and hackers who want a quick way to do stats. Num is a great candidate for Unix distros because it's lightweight, simple, and runs on so many systems.

brudgers 11y ago

How does it compare to GNU Octave or J?

jph 11y ago
Num is much simpler than GNU Octave or J. Num takes command line input, such as file of numbers or a standard input pipe, and outputs common statistics. Num has a goal to be similar to Unix standard tools such as sed, awk, and wc. We're working to make Num fully POSIX compatible so we can write fully portable scripts. GNU Octave and J are full featured languages, with excellent data structures, and you can do much more in these environments. R/CRAN and Python/pandas are similarly powerful. These all require installations of binaries or compilers, and involve ongoing updates of versions, libraries, dependencies, and the like. Why use Num? Num is great when you're writing a shell script and you want a lightweight way to do simple statistics. Num is great when you want your script to be able to run on a wide range of standard systems and be able to run as is for a long time. For example, we use Num for our system monitoring scripts, continuous delivery processing, and Ansible deployments.