Hi Burcin, Thanks for the explanation!
> "Symbolic ring" is an unfortunate name. It doesn't mean much from the > "mathematical point of view." It's just where all the symbolic stuff > live in Sage. Maybe we should call it symbolic parent. I agree that the naming is unfortunate. I think it would be a good idea to add this remark in the documentation. > AFAICT, most non mathematician users prefer to work with symbols > instead of using the algebraic structures directly. I hope this idea is not based on Maple and MMA having such symbolic parents. In any case i think it should be easy to explain what is happening, although some users are not aware. In your example t=3 is in ZZ_5 and u is a function from ZZ_5 to ZZ_5, mapping n to 3^n. So although some users may be not aware, they are actually working over the ring ZZ_5. What i do understand is that for example elements in QQBar should be represented by symbols (sqrt(2) instead of a numerical value 1,... or pi instead of 3.14... ). An computer algebra system should be able to manipulate these symbols, such that it is mathematically correct in a given algebraic structure. I think that the output is then both for mathematicians and non mathematicians better understandable, and such symbolic inputs are also more human readable. Sorry if i am stating the obvious here, the reason is that i am trying to explain why i think it should be (either implicit or explicit) clear over which algebraic structure is computed. Cheers, Niels --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
