fix flaky tests

Python 2.6 does not handle float error well as 2.7+

Author: Davies Liu <davies.liu@gmail.com>

Closes #1910 from davies/fix_test and squashes the following commits:

7e51200 [Davies Liu] fix flaky tests

(cherry picked from commit 882da57a1c8c075a87909d516b169b624941a6ec)
Signed-off-by: Michael Armbrust <michael@databricks.com>
SPARK-2830 [MLlib]: re-organize mllib documentation

As per discussions with Xiangrui, I've reorganized and edited the mllib documentation.

Author: Ameet Talwalkar <atalwalkar@gmail.com>

Closes #1908 from atalwalkar/master and squashes the following commits:

fe6938a [Ameet Talwalkar] made xiangruis suggested changes
840028b [Ameet Talwalkar] made xiangruis suggested changes
7ec366a [Ameet Talwalkar] reorganize and edit mllib documentation

(cherry picked from commit c235b83e2782cce0626ecc403c0a67e442be52c1)
Signed-off-by: Xiangrui Meng <meng@databricks.com>
[SPARK-2953] Allow using short names for io compression codecs

Instead of requiring "org.apache.spark.io.LZ4CompressionCodec", it is easier for users if Spark just accepts "lz4", "lzf", "snappy".

Author: Reynold Xin <rxin@apache.org>

Closes #1873 from rxin/compressionCodecShortForm and squashes the following commits:

9f50962 [Reynold Xin] Specify short-form compression codec names first.
63f78ee [Reynold Xin] Updated configuration documentation.
47b3848 [Reynold Xin] [SPARK-2953] Allow using short names for io compression codecs

(cherry picked from commit 676f98289dad61c091bb45bd35a2b9613b22d64a)
Signed-off-by: Reynold Xin <rxin@apache.org>
Use transferTo when copy merge files in ExternalSorter

Since this is a file to file copy, using transferTo should be faster.

Author: Raymond Liu <raymond.liu@intel.com>

Closes #1884 from colorant/externalSorter and squashes the following commits:

6e42f3c [Raymond Liu] More code into copyStream
bfb496b [Raymond Liu] Use transferTo when copy merge files in ExternalSorter

(cherry picked from commit 246cb3f158686348a698d1c0da3001c314727129)
Signed-off-by: Reynold Xin <rxin@apache.org>
[SPARK-1777 (partial)] bugfix: make size of requested memory correctly

Author: Zhang, Liye <liye.zhang@intel.com>

Closes #1892 from liyezhang556520/lazy_memory_request and squashes the following commits:

335ab61 [Zhang, Liye] [SPARK-1777 (partial)] bugfix: make size of requested memory correctly

(cherry picked from commit 2bd812639c3d8c62a725fb7577365ef0816f2898)
Signed-off-by: Reynold Xin <rxin@apache.org>
[SPARK-2993] [MLLib] colStats (wrapper around MultivariateStatisticalSummary) in Statistics

For both Scala and Python.

The ser/de util functions were moved out of `PythonMLLibAPI` and into their own object to avoid creating the `PythonMLLibAPI` object inside of `MultivariateStatisticalSummarySerialized`, which is then referenced inside of a method in `PythonMLLibAPI`.

`MultivariateStatisticalSummarySerialized` was created to serialize the `Vector` fields in `MultivariateStatisticalSummary`.

Author: Doris Xin <doris.s.xin@gmail.com>

Closes #1911 from dorx/colStats and squashes the following commits:

77b9924 [Doris Xin] developerAPI tag
de9cbbe [Doris Xin] reviewer comments and moved more ser/de
459faba [Doris Xin] colStats in Statistics for both Scala and Python

(cherry picked from commit fe4735958e62b1b32a01960503876000f3d2e520)
Signed-off-by: Xiangrui Meng <meng@databricks.com>