Remember CPAN was born in the time of archie, gopher and WAIS, so it was a good way to distribute alpha code or to explore an idea and it may still be providing that function when github decides to charge for all repositories in 2025.

That said, the ratings, reviews, etc mentioned above are the minimum necessary for selecting the module for your needs. I've been having a look at numerical modules and, at over 500, it's a bit of a chore just to figure out what each one does in order to classify it.