Norman

The norman library provides everything you need for calculationg norms of elements of vector spaces.

Based on two traits—Norm and Distance – this crate implements different kinds of norm and distance functions for a wide variety of types—including complex numbers and arrays.

These traits are mainly meant to facilitate generic implementations of numeric algorithms, where one often needs a grasp of how big a value is or how far two values are apart.

Usage

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
norman = "0.0.4"

Then you can calculate the euclidean distance between two complex numbers:

use num_complex::Complex;

use norman::Distance;
use norman::desc::Abs;

assert_eq!(Complex::new(2.0, 5.0).distance(&Complex::new(-1.0, 1.0), Abs::new()), 5.0);

or the supremum norm, 2-norm and 1-norm of a vector that is rerpesented by an ndarray:

use ndarray::Array1;

use norman::Norm;
use norman::desc::{Sup, PNorm};

let a = Array1::from(vec![2.0f32, -4.0, -2.0]);

assert_eq!(a.norm(Sup::new()), 4.0);
assert_eq!(a.norm(PNorm::new(2)), (2.0f32*2.0 + 4.0*4.0 + 2.0*2.0).sqrt());
assert_eq!(a.norm(PNorm::new(1)), 2.0f32 + 4.0 + 2.0);

The minimum supported version of rustc is currently 1.34.2.

Crate stability

The main reason why this crate is in pre-0.1-state is that I am not sure about the naming of several items, so it may still encounter some renames. I am particularly not very happy with the verbose name norm_eucl for “just calulate the usual standard norm“.

Future development

The first step will be to support types representing usual vectors which are around in the ecosystem like:

• vector types of rulinalg, nalgebra and co.

• simd types from packed_simd

Later I will maybe introduce some operator norms on matrices.

Furthermore, I might think about adding a new trait for derivatives of norms – in some algorithms, you do not only need to know the exact value of a norm, but also the derivative in order to know in which direction to go if you want to minimize the norm.

License

Norman is distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the Apache License (Version 2.0).

See LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT, and COPYING for details.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.