
Num command – new tool for simple statistics - jph
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.numcommand.com and Twitter @NumCommand<p>Num is a command line tool for mathematics and statistics data processing.<p>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.<p>The site has a tutorial, FAQ, and notes on related command line tools, R&#x2F;CRAN and Python&#x2F;pandas, datamash and qstats.<p>There&#x27;s a Kickstarter link if you want to fund.<p>I&#x27;m the author and happy to answer questions about Num.
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trcollinson
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?

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jph
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.

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brudgers
How does it compare to GNU Octave or J?

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jph
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.

