[Haskell-beginners] Function to compute the mean
Joe King
joeking1809 at yahoo.com
Sat May 8 09:39:50 UTC 2021
Greeetings I am new here and pretty new to Haskell.
I was wondering what are the relative advanatges/disadvatnages of specifying a mean function in these two ways:
mean :: [Double] -> Double
mean xs = sum xs / fromIntegral (length xs)
and
mean1 :: (Real a, Fractional b) => [a] -> b
mean1 xs = realToFrac (sum xs) / genericLength xs
I understand that mean1 has the advantage that it can be called with lists of any Real type, so would work with things like
foo :: [Int]
foo = [1,2,3]
mean foo
-- type mismatch error
mean1 foo
-- no error
But suppose that I know I will only ever use lists of Double, is there still any advantage (or disadvantage of using mean1). For example is there any performance benefit by using mean in that case since mean1 has additional function evaluation.
Are there any other considerations ?
Thanks in advance
JK
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