I don't think the readability of implementations is all that important. Java is widely regarded as having poor syntax, but any client of this type of a method (

I don't think the readability of implementations is all that important. Java is widely regarded as having poor syntax, but any client of this type of a method (assuming it is in a static utility class) will do something like double myEntropy = InformationTheory.entropy(myseries); The details of a method like that just aren't all that interesting, it's 10 lines or 200 (likely the latter as there seems to be an optimized version for doing anything). I like to abstract away mathematically complex(ish) things like this and leave syntax like I stated above in my code, so that my code tells a story that is easy to read about how data is being manipulated and really focus on the high level semantics of what is going on. Maybe I am influenced from having done clerical work in HS and typing fast enough that a few lines doesn't matter, but sometimes I prefer longer code, with more interfaces and more abstraction and more standardization to concise and elegant but more obscure approaches.