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Re: Past uses of NaN?

N. M. MacLaren wrote:

The use for missing values was first perpetrated by C, and its rationale
for doing so may be politely described as demonstrably almost totally
bogus.  In particular, its claim about the need for max(A,NaN) = A in
statistics is the converse of the truth.  I could explain that in detail,
if people are interested.


I'd be very interested. Cany you give more details?
In your paper I see you did suggest min and max should be required to percolate NaNs and raise exceptions, just like any other numeric (arithmetic) operation. 

Nate Hayes