defaulting to numpy arrays (replace with dataframes)
support for backwards compatibility (e.g. arguments that don't really do anything or that have been replaced) and multi-named keywords (e.g. 'color' and 'colors')
support for multi-use arguments (e.g. align=True and align='hyper' do the same thing...but we should just support align='hyper' so that the API is cleaner and more consistent
i think we should get rid of: