I’ve noticed that the beta
function in the math library isn’t currently exposed to the Stan language, and was adding signatures for it. But as Rok pointed out over on Github, beta
is a pretty common variable name and exposing it as a function could break current models.
At the moment, users can employ the beta function in stan models by specifying exp(lbeta(a, b))
, which is all the beta
function does in the math library anyway. So if it’s going be a userspace-breaking change, it might not be necessary to expose the function at all.
Alternatively, a simple fix could be to capitalise and denote it Beta(a,b)
, similar to the Phi
function.
Any thoughts/preferences here?