[Rd] Rust bindings to nmath

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Dirk Eddelbuettel 
>>>>>     on Tue, 1 Sep 2020 07:56:53 -0500 writes:

    > On 1 September 2020 at 13:01, Richard Dodd wrote:
    > | I needed some statistical functions for a project I was working on in
    > | Rust, and I've used the R math library as a standalone solution. I

    > That's its purpose as far as I can tell. We have provided it as a Debian
    > package alongside the "normal" R interpreter (and everything else) "for
    > decades" too.

    > | thought the R developers would be interested in the fact that their work
    > | is being used elsewhere, and I also wanted to say thanks for some code I
    > | do NOT want to have to write myself!
    > | 
    > | The "crate" (Rust's name for a package) is at 
    > | https://lib.rs/crates/r_stats.

    > Nice.

Indeed.  Thank you for letting us know!

{BTW: There's been an ambitious project of binding all of
      mathlib *and more out of R*  to a java script library;
 But I think that project has taken the typical course of
 the majority of github projects:  "code rut"}
      
    > Any chance you could rename it to a more neutral r_mathlib or something?
    > As a free-standing C library it has long been wrapped by other languages, but
    > if it were my project I'd be more careful to not imply "all of stats" here.
    > FWIW in Debian we call it `r-mathlib`.

    > Dirk
    > -- 
    > https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org

As one of the main coders or rather tweakers of its source code,
I strongly agree with Dirk  that 'r_stats' is really misleading here.

>From an R point of view,  'math library' has been a good name,
notably because there's a lot of applied math routines in there,
99% related to (applied) probability which is part of math.

If 'Rust' and other re-implementors think they must add
"stat(s)" somewhere --- which is understandable, since the
"applied math" mentioned above is almost exclusively applied to
functions important in probability and statistics ---
I'd propose something like
    " r_stats_math "

Martin Mächler
ETH Zurich  and  R Core team

--
Martin <Maechler using stat.math.ethz.ch>   http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler
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