Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 1/8/2006 9:24 PM, Ben Bolker wrote:
>
>> It surprised me that prod(numeric(0)) is 1.
>> I guess if you say (operation(nothing) == identity
>> element) this makes sense, but ??
>
>
> What value were you expecting, or were you expecting an error? I can't
> think how any other value could be justified, and throwing an error
> would make a lot of formulas more complicated.
>
>>
>
>
> That's a fairly standard mathematical convention, which is presumably
> why sum and prod work that way.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
OK. I guess I was expecting NaN/NA (as opposed to an error),
but I take the "this makes everything else more complicated" point.
Should this be documented or is it just too obvious ... ?
(Funny -- I'm willing to take gamma(1)==1 without any argument
or suggestion that it should be documented ...)
cheers
Ben
--
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