Hi folks, This morning I received issue 109, September 2008, of "Linux Format" magazine (dead tree version). Down under in Australia, we do have to wait quite some time for overseas magazines to arrive. And when they appear on the news stand at my local magazines store, the "latest issues" of Linux related magazines tend to be rather out of date --- that is, if you don't have subscriptions.
The September 2008 issue of "Linux Format" magazine has a review of Sage version 3.0.1 on page 33. This review is part of the issue's "Roundup" section, pp.30--35, which also reviews Matlab, Octave, Euler Math Toolbox, and Scilab. Unfortunately, I can't (yet) find an online version of the Sage review at the official home page of the magazine: http://www.linuxformat.co.uk I've reproduced the Sage review below. <magazine-review> Sage When the maths gets really serious. Sage is so much more than a numerical computing platform. Yes, it does numerics, but it also does symbolic computer algebra that makes it an extremely capable system for doing calculus and algebra but also research in cryptography, number theory, and graph theory, to name a few. Sage takes a departure from the other platforms in this review in that it uses Python rather than having a programming language of its own. For some users this will be a significant attractor, since if you already know and love Python you won't have to learn another language. From the performance checks using the SVD and FFT, Sage (using Python's Numpy Library) was comparable to Scilab and Octave, while the SVD test was blazingly fast --- faster than Matlab by a significant margin. Sage is a relative newcomer to this group but it does make use of software that started many years ago. Take Maxima for instance. Maxima has as its ancestor the Macsyma computer algebra system initially developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1960s. Maxima and other components make Sage an eclectic mix of mathematical software. It's all about sharing One laudable goal of the Sage project is to enable the convenient sharing of mathematical ideas, and one way it does this is through the use of web-based notebooks. You can enter commands into the console provided by the Sage web application and then evaluate them. It really is like writing a math notebook online. Your notebooks can be saved and shared, which has many positive implications for teaching and research collaborations. You can try Sage without having to build or install it by going to www.sagenb.org, signing up for a free account and writing your own notebook. <image> [image featuring a Sage notebook session and a 3-D plot] [caption: "The graphics in Sage normally display in a Java applet inside the page. So much for the bleeding edge..."] </image> </magazine-review> The notebook in the image shows the following code, which was used to produce the said 3-D plot: <Sage-code> u,v = var('u,v') fx = (3 + sin(v) + cos(u)) * cos(2*v) fy = (3 + sin(v) + cos(u)) * sin(2*v) fz = sin(u) + 2 * cos(v) P = parametric_plot3d([fx, fy, fz], (u, 0, 2*pi), (v, 0, 2*pi), \ frame=False, color="red") show(P) </Sage-code> Here are the ratings: Euler Math Toolbox: 5/10 Matlab: 9/10 Octave: 7/10 Sage: 6/10 Scilab: 9/10 By the way, I'm not quite sure what "SVD" and "FFT" refer to. -- Regards Minh Van Nguyen Web: http://nguyenminh2.googlepages.com Blog: http://mvngu.wordpress.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
