Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 December 11

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December 11

Is there an app to speed up repetitive set averaging and/or making line graphs?

Especially multiline line graphs where each point is always the average of a set and is always 1 x-coordinate to the right of the previous one and line graphs of the average value of the top 10 things of each country each year where things aren't created often and exist forever unchanged once created and just stop affecting the average once (if) 10 better things exist. Then there'd be a lot less data entry for me. Also can I make three such line graphs that are the same except the y-coordinates of some points differ slightly and then average the graphs into one? Any recommendations? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

R is what all the cool stat kids use, but there's a bit of a learning curve. --47.152.93.24 (talk) 03:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

• I agree, R is ideal for this. I use the ggplot package for graphing on occasion. But I'd say it has a learning cliff, rather than a learning curve.... Lots of resources online though. Fgf10 (talk) 09:29, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

R (and the related RStudio), SAS, Matlab, Octave, Python+NumPy+MatPlotLib... There are many programming languages designed for statistical work. The ones mentioned here natively use matrix math operations so you can easily perform work over a large set of data with a single function. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 15:47, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

gnuplot might be simpler than R for something like that, but it still has a bit of a learning curve. I can't think of any stats/graphing package that's really easy to just pick up and use, tbh... 71.190.77.44 (talk) 16:38, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Best website to seek opinions

I would like to know the best website to seek opinions such the most influential people of all time. I asked this at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Wikipedia's_reference_desk_vs_Quora, I was told to ask here so I was hoping to get an answer. You are welcome to look at that thread if you would like so you can get a bigger picture of what I'm asking. Thanks, Interstellarity (talk) 22:11, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Your question at the Teahouse was about where to ask factual questions. The question who are or were the most influential people of all time is very much not a factual question. Was the inventor of the concept "zero" more influential than the Buddha? In general, the best place to ask a question depends on the question. The RD is IMO a good place to ask factual questions, but is not meant for soliciting opinions about the most extreme whatever with respect to an undefined scale. That is stuff for a chat room. In subreddits you see questions being asked like "what is the greatest mixtape/Sabre/movie/standup comedian/Pixel/DLC/accomplishment in an MMORPG/... of all time?", where "greatest mixtape" is asked in r/hiphop1, "greatest Sabre" in r/sabres, and so on.  --Lambiam 02:01, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Thanks for the response. Interstellarity (talk) 14:10, 12 December 2020 (UTC)