Revise the current API

[sylwiabr]

Some points that have been raised:

• max of a column is not a number, but a column (I understand why that is so, but it is not nice to work with)
• The map over a column works in a way that gets me totally lost. I need to specify the type of the column: but I don't know it in the first place. That's a big win for pandas, where I can map like I know it.

[sylwiabr]

maybe describe method should be for whole Dataframe and describeColumn sholud take columnName and do what current describe does? @piotrMocz @kustosz ?

[mwu-tow]

Case: user has a table, wants to fill nulls in each column with a mean value for that column

[piotrMocz]

The thing I have very strong feelings about:
the Table class should expose the read<Format> method. Please keep in mind that we're not targetting expert programmers or even hobbyist programmers, but "data profesionals".

Table.readCSV is a method that gives you a table from a CSV file. Table.readXLS is a method that gives you a table from an Excel file. And so on. Accidentally, this is exactly how pandas does it. Advantages:

• single import for Table read and for Table processing
• "ideological" compatibility with pandas
• hides the implementation details and makes the API dead simple

Currently you write CSVParser.readFile. Let's look at the drawbacks:

• when processing data, you need another entity: some parser. I wouldn't want to have to know about some parsers when all I want to do is to read a dataframe from file
• one more concept to keep track of
• one more import

All in all, I suggest we at least add the Table.readCSV = CSVParser.readFile alias.

Like, really, please 😅

[sylwiabr]

All non-user facing functions should have _ prefix

[sylwiabr]

@piotrMocz what do you rthink about #57 in context of reading/writing files?

[wdanilo]

Moreover, the toInt method should be named toEnum

[sylwiabr]

Table.fromFile should have better name (more descriptive)

[sylwiabr]

removeColumn -> removeByIndex

[sylwiabr]

keep as opposite to remove

[sylwiabr]

corr -> correlations
corrWith -> correlationsWith

[sylwiabr]

change generated names from CORR_WITH_foo to corr_with_foo

[sylwiabr]

sort -> sortMultiple
sort Descending by default
sort config (?)

[piotrMocz]

@piotrMocz what do you rthink about #57 in context of reading/writing files?

I left a comment there ;)

[sylwiabr]

plotVerticalLayout [Plot] - to remove when lazy vis appears