Program requirements
These are the program requirements that stood at the
basis of the Statistical Data Viewer:
- open source:
- high priority is given to programming techniques that
encourage others to improve the program and to adapt it to
their own needs. In particular, this implies
- a single well known programming language
- use of well documented open source libraries
- a modular, object oriented design
- clean programming interfaces
- self documenting code
- machine independence:
- the application has to work on the majority of computer
systems popular in academic research.
- functional division:
- the interface must show a clear functional devision.
- direct manipulation:
- all essential mathematical attributes of an object have to be
available for immediate manipulation and interpretation.
- observability:
- all visible objects must reflect their current state.
Progress bars must give estimates of the duration of time
consuming executions and it must be possible to stop them at
random.
- usability:
- the application has to be accessible to students
that are unfamiliar with the theory.
- reproducibility:
- it must be possible to reproduce an experiment in all its
aspects. It must be possible to randomly load and save all
states of an experiment in a robust and fault tolerant way.
- standard file format:
- all experiments are saved and loaded in XML. XML is a well
defined standard, there is no shortage of fast and convenient
XML parsers and XML can be read by humans.
- broad input:
- it must be possible to enter samples in the following
ways:
- read samples from a file
- take samples from a broad and interesting set of
predefined processes
- draw and manipulate samples by hand
- scientific output:
- the application must provide high quality plots which can be used
for publication.
- scientific documentation:
- the used algorithms have to be fully documented as they
might be influencing the results.