On 10/3/11 10:23 AM, Sébastien Brisard wrote: >> I would be curious to see how such a class would actually help you. I have >> to admit that a big part of my curiosity is due to the fact that I don't >> understand how it really would help. It could be, as you say, beautiful but >> useful is sometimes are more difficult goal with these things. >> >> I would also like to see if you are able to express enough interesting >> structure in the Java type system so as to be useful. >> >> So please do create a prototype. It will be very interesting to see it. >> > I had nothing fancy in mind. I wanted merely to build a Group and a > Ring following what has been done in CM with Field/FieldElement. > I already had the opportunity to mention this library, but Jean-Marie > Dautelle's JScience is a good example of implementation of all these > mathematical structures (http://jscience.org/). However, I tend to > prefer the way Fields are implemented in CM (there are slight > differences, most notably getZero() and getOne() which are missing in > JScience). > If you are still interested, I'll post (not commit, I got the > message!!!) tentative interfaces once I've written them.
What is most interesting is the example use cases. I think we all know that it is straightforward and easy to define the interfaces and classes, which basically just amount to removing structure or closure properties from fields. The question is do they really get you anything? You mentioned above a Taylor series example. I did not follow what was going on there exactly. Were the coefficients over Z, or the values? What other rings were you considering? What groups, exactly? That is what I meant by having the use cases first, then introducing the abstractions as needed. Before introducing the mathematical objects, we need "real world applications" in mind that are going to use them. Of course, our "real world" can include some pretty arcane stuff; but at the end of the day, we need to have internal or external application use cases in mind for everything that we add to [math]. Phil > Sébastien > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
