Thank you Jason, David, and Ted for your reviews. I made all the changes and sent the letter to the Python GHOP group.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Python's Project for the Google Highly Open Participation group, I am a 17 year old home schooled high school student in Seattle, Washington and contributor to a Python based open source mathematics software project called Sage (http://sagemath.org). Onrej Certik, creator of SymPy (http://sympy.org), suggested that the Sage project participate in this contest as a Python project. I think that is a wonderful idea because in the Sage project there are many of interesting and accessible problems to work on and numerous ways for pre-university students to contribute time. I would like to get Sage involved in the contest by introducing Sage, planning Sage involvement, and writing and supervising tickets. I do not want to be a contestant. Sage is a massive extension to Python for all kinds of mathematical computing. The goal of the Sage project is to develop an open source alternative to the math software Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB, and Magma. To achieve this goal in a reasonable amount of time, the Sage developers did not reinvent the wheel. Instead, the Sage project has produced a system with a wide range of functionality in less than three years by maintaining a distribution of the best available math software and writing a Python library that unifies the software and libraries and eliminates much of the complexity of many of these packages for the end users. Many people first started seriously using Python because of Sage. At every introductory talk on Sage, the advantages to using Python over other languages and its popularity are well emphasized. Thanks in great part to Python, Sage is an excellent system for teaching students about both math and computer science. Sage has a web environment called the Sage Notebook, and two free public notebook servers are available at http://sagenb.com and http://sagenb.org. A Sage worksheet is similar to a Mathematica notebook, and although it lacks many of the neat features of Crunchy, it does provide a fairly robust notebook system. Some of Sage's features include user accounts, worksheet sharing, tab completion, infinite loop survival, two and three dimensional graphics, interactive documentation, and public notebook security. The Sage Notebook is also an excellent platform for creating mathematical art. A good example of that is a worksheet called "New Found Spin" at https://sage.math.washington.edu:8102/home/pub/11/. Although most of the focus of Sage development is on aiding cutting edge mathematical research, Sage has good support for elementary algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. Also, some of Sage's upper level mathematics functionality is accessible to many high school and college students. For example, in the summer of 2006, under the direction of William Stein (lead developer of Sage) 24 talented high school students used Sage via the notebook in a computer lab to explore the congruent number problem and in the process were introduced to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (http:// wstein.org/simuw06/). Then, in the next summer, another 24 students used Sage to comprehend Riemann's Hypothesis (http://wstein.org/ simuw/). I think that there are many ways that pre-university students can contribute to Sage. Timothy Clemans On Dec 7, 8:44 pm, "Ted Kosan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Timothy wrote: > > I have spent about 11 hours working on a letter to the Project, Google > > Highly Open Participation group to get Sage involved in that contest. > > William and Ondrej were very helpful and reviewed several drafts. > > Please review, ask questions and give comments? Thank you! > > I have included some editing thoughts below with deletions in red and > additions in green. I hope that the rich text mode worked and if not, let > me know and I will send you my suggestions in a separate document. > > Ted > > > > > Dear Python's Project for the Google Highly Open Participation group, > > > I am a 17 year old home schooled high school student in Seattle, > > Washington and contributor to a Python based open source mathematics > > software project called Sage (http://sagemath.org). Onrej Certik, > > creator of SymPy (http://sympy.org), suggested that the Sage project > > participate in this contest as a Python project. I think that is a > > wonderful idea because in the Sage project there are a lot of many > > interesting and accessible problems to work on and many numerous ways for > pre- > > university students to contribute time. I would like to get Sage > > involved in the contest by introducing Sage, planning Sage > > involvement, and writing and supervising tickets. I do not want to be > > a contestant. > > > Sage is a massive extension to Python for all kinds of mathematical > > computing. The goal of the Sage project is to develop an open source > > alternative to the math software Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB, and > > Magma. To achieve this goal in a reasonable about amount of time, the Sage > > developers did not reinvent the wheel. Instead, the Sage project has > > produced a system with a wide range of functionality in almost less > > thanthree > > years by maintaining a distribution of the best available math > > software and writing a Python library that unifies the software and > > libraries and eliminates much of the complexity of many of these > > packages for the end users. > > > Many people first started seriously using Python because of Sage. At > > every introductory talk on Sage, the advantages to using Python over > > other languages and its popularity are well emphasized. Thanks in > > great part to Python, Sage is an excellent system for teaching > > students about both math and computer science. > > > Sage has a web environment called the Sage Notebook, and two free > > public notebook servers are available athttp://sagenb.comand > > http://sagenb.org. A> Sage worksheet is similar to a Mathematica notebook > and, although it > > lacks many of the neat features of Crunchy, it does provide a fairly > > robust notebook system. Some of the features of it are Sage's features > > include user accounts, > > > worksheet sharing, tab completion, infinite loop survival, two and > > three dimensional graphics, interactive documentation, and public > > notebook security. > > > The Sage Notebook is also an excellent platform for creating mathematical > > art. A good example of that is a worksheet called "New Found Spin" at > >https://sage.math.washington.edu:8102/home/pub/11/. > > > Although most of the focus of Sage development is on aiding cutting > > edge mathematical research, Sage has good support for elementary > > algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. Also, some of Sage's > > upper level mathematics functionality is accessible to many high > > school and college students. For example, in the summer of 2006, (under > > the direction of William Stein, lead developer of Sage), 24 talented > > high school students used Sage via the notebook in a computer lab to > explore > > the congruent number problem and in the process were introducded > introduced to > > the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (http://wstein.org/simuw06/). > > Then, in the next summer, another 24 students used Sage to comprehend > > Riemann's Hypothesis (http://wstein.org/simuw/). > > > I think that there lots of are many ways that pre-university students can > contribute > > to Sage. > > > Timothy Clemans --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
