I think that you probably miss the point.  Most engineers are not
trained in number theory, group theory, advanced algebra, etc. Leaving
these parts out of Sage would potentially make it easier to use.  But
then maybe the engineer should use Maxima, or one of those other
systems that either ignores the central "pure math only" computational
parts of Sage, or relegates them to some less-prominent position.
RJF

On Mar 25, 6:32 am, Stan Schymanski <schym...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am an example for someone that does use both modes. I do symbolic
> derivations and transformations and then apply them to data, so I fancy
> a system where both symbolic evaluations and numerical approximations
> can be done transparently. If one is only interested in numerical
> evaluations, why not use e.g. Octave? In my opinion, installing only a
> set of numerical tools or only a set of symbolic tools in Sage would
> amount to crippling a great piece of software, so if such an option was
> made possible we should make sure that a message is plastered all over
> the interface to make sure people don't confuse this with the real Sage.
>
> I apologise in advance if I misunderstood the context of this thread.
>
> Cheers
> Stan
>
> Pablo Angulo wrote:
> >> It's all about acquiring a bigger audience in the applied fields.
> >> There is certainly the impression out there that Sage is MAINLY a CAS
> >> system (as opposed to a numerical system), and more geared towards
> >> pure mathematicians than engineers, physicists, and applied
> >> scientists. A separate and clear way to configure or to download an
> >> engineering version (say through a separate webpage), that is well
> >> advertised, would go a long way in helping Sage as a whole. Just my
> >> humble opinion.
>
> > I found some of sage features a bit of a mess the first times I did
> > numerical computation in sage, like using Reals and Integers instead of
> > float or ints, or using rationals and symbolic expressions for radicals.
>
> > But I think a numerical mode would be a better choice. Selecting python
> > in the drop list gets you closer to that, but it still yields the
> > symbolic sqrt(2) instead of the numerical approximation, for example.
>
> > Just loading math.sqrt instead of sqrt and taking similar choices of
> > loaded packages would be enough for me, with same interface and package
> > base. Like me, I think many people would use one mode or the other,
> > depending on the task, so installing both the standard and the applied
> > versions would not be saving any space.
>
> > Regards
> > Pablo
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel
URLs: http://www.sagemath.org
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to