I might shy away from any personal attacks on Stephen Wolfram, despite controversy as him as a scientist. This should be about comparing sage and Mathematica, not the people behind them.
One thing that is a natural advantage for me is the ability to not only use all the packages included in sage, but any python package. I find myself using sage to scrape, reconfigure and analyze large pieces of data from a variety of sources. Python makes this easy. Because there are so many python modules, it is very likely there is one that does what I need. If not I can code it (usually relying on other modules), and release it as its own module, building the number of things that can be done quickly with python and sage. And as far as scientific computation, if there isn't a python module that does what I need (that is not included in sage) there is certainly an R package that will. Sage is not only good for mathematical research, but any scientific and engineering research, just because of the huge number available packages to use in python. I can't say I think the same is true with mathematica. Ben On Sep 9, 8:08 am, Jan Groenewald <j...@aims.ac.za> wrote: > Hi > > > >On 09/ 9/10 10:47 AM, Jan Groenewald wrote: > > >>* the price of the software > > >>http://www.wolfram.com/events/southafrica2010/ > > >>$139.95 even for students. I'm not sure I can convey > > >>how astronomical that amount to almost all African > > >>students. > On Thu, Sep 09, 2010 at 08:43:41AM -0500, Jason Grout wrote: > > Can you put it in terms of numbers of work days for a student > > working? For example, we pay I think $9/hour at our institution, so > > $139.95 would be 15.5 hours, or around two full-time days. > > Poverty is pervasive, not isolated, so even at a more relative > comparison like working hours, the context is left out. > I guess at least three times that. At worst thirty times that. > > I have emailed the local reseller to ask for prices, and can > ask Mathematica if they show up here. > > regards, > Jan > > -- > .~. > /V\ Jan Groenewald > /( )\ www.aims.ac.za > ^^-^^ -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
