On Nov 6, 5:06 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > On 11/ 6/10 10:25 PM, William Stein wrote: > > > I think it would be wonderful to have a fast implementation of > > computing the number primes up to x, which is freely available, > > especially given the central role that the Riemann Hypothesis (which > > is a statement about pi(x)) has in mathematics. It's sad that there > > seem not to be any free modern fast implementations available (?). > > > That said, I've advised two strong math students on projects to > > implement code to compute pi(x), and I would not be optimistic about > > an undergrad doing this as a project, unless they have a really > > unusually strong mathematical background, and excellent C/Cython > > programming skills. > > > -- William > > I'm not sure if the student asking was an undergrad or postgrad. We tend to > use > the terms different here in the UK to the US. > > The original poster said: > > "I am currently a senior computer science student with a strong math > background. > One of my professors, Dana Ernst, also a member here, recommended that I post > here. I am looking for a senior project involving programing, algorithms, > parallel processing, and mathematics." > > I've no idea where that fits in.
I observe that the "mathematics" part is last, after programming, algorithms, and parallel processing. You express enthusiasm for writing a single program that contributes probably nothing to our understanding of the distribution of primes (etc), but merely duplicates something, albeit faster or slower, that we already have and which has no particular foreseeable impact outside of theoretical math. Alternatively, the student, who is after all a computer science student, can learn about and perhaps even contribute to, modern tools to make programming on parallel computers work better, or use existing tools on some problem and write programs for particular parallel computers (e.g. cloud computing). The web site I indicated above provides substantial links to problems considered important by computer scientists, engineers, applied mathematicians, and links to existing technology. Exploring these topics would be much more likely to have an impact on (say) future employment, and might even have some positive impact on technology (though somewhat unlikely, in my experience, for an undergraduate project...) I would answer this question differently if the student said that he was a mathematics student deeply interested in theoretical mathematics etc etc and wanted to push forward on some still-standing conjecture by using parallelism. RJF -- 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
