API: extend resample to handle non-datetime numeric axes?

[shoyer]

Numeric indexes are pretty common with scientific datasets and xarray. For such data, resampling to a new resolution is a pretty common operation.

Currently, resampling only works for dates. Any thoughts on making it work for all numeric axes? I think every argument in the signature would still make sense for numbers, except the rule would be expected to be a number, not a string.

I expect the implementation would be relatively straightforward, given that we don't need to handle the complexity of datetime frequencies.

xref pydata/xarray#818

[jreback]

yes, this is not very hard, basically just need a way to snap points to new points, which is what cut does (and you can generically map as well). The new .resample is pretty setup to do this as well. For completeness, can you show a simple motiviating example, with a demo-frame and output.