[sage-devel] Re: Can We Trust Computer Algebra Systems?
I herebey nominate this flame for the Quote of the Year Award. More seriously : rjf is probably right in stating that a mathematical error is more likely to be detected by mathematicians rather than results-oriented people : in most *practical* cases, an approximation will not be practically distinguishable from the exact results, but still lead to possible catastrophe. Furthermore, most results-oriented people will happily sacrifice correctness on the altar of practicality. And when practicality includes social or political feasibility, the sacricice has dire onsequences (yes, economists, I'm looking at you : Forty years of unexpected consequences and still no incentive to revise your postulates... -- Emmanuel Charpentier Le dimanche 26 octobre 2014 16:46:54 UTC+1, rjf a écrit : This article is also discussed in another thread .. Trio . . Depending on what you are doing with the results of any computation, it may be prudent to verify the results. I don't know that CAS are especially more prone to bugs, but it may be that CAS are more likely to come up with results that can be disproved, thereby revealing a bug. Or what is sometimes referred to as a feature. For example, if a weather-prediction program had a bug in it that caused it to predict incorrectly 5% of the time, it might take a while to even notice. flame Fortunately, the result of many computations with CAS are of no consequence whatsoever. /flame On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:23:42 PM UTC-7, kcrisman wrote: Feature article in the Notices: http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1249.pdf The point, as the authors say, is not about any one system; as we know, any nontrivial software (including good ol' Sage) has plenty of bugs. Happy reading! - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[sage-devel] Re: Can We Trust Computer Algebra Systems?
This article is also discussed in another thread .. Trio . . Depending on what you are doing with the results of any computation, it may be prudent to verify the results. I don't know that CAS are especially more prone to bugs, but it may be that CAS are more likely to come up with results that can be disproved, thereby revealing a bug. Or what is sometimes referred to as a feature. For example, if a weather-prediction program had a bug in it that caused it to predict incorrectly 5% of the time, it might take a while to even notice. flame Fortunately, the result of many computations with CAS are of no consequence whatsoever. /flame On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:23:42 PM UTC-7, kcrisman wrote: Feature article in the Notices: http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1249.pdf The point, as the authors say, is not about any one system; as we know, any nontrivial software (including good ol' Sage) has plenty of bugs. Happy reading! - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[sage-devel] Re: Can We Trust Computer Algebra Systems?
On 2014-10-24, Jakob Kroeker kroe...@uni-math.gwdg.de wrote: I'm doing this: since in the recent project I ran into many bugs in a well-known CAS, and now I do not trust any function I use and started to look actively for bugs (testing and code reviewing) and discovered about 100 bugs during the last year. Some code parts (which exist and were used for more than 10 years) I checked, reach an error rate about 5 bugs per 1000 lines. Sage builds on top of this CAS and probably on top of other buggy packages. Erm, well, if this unnamed package is Maxima, I hope you'll share the fruits of your labors and file bug reports for the bugs you found. I can't promise that we'll be able to fix them soon, but we'll try. best Robert Dodier -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Can We Trust Computer Algebra Systems?
On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 7:26 PM, Robert Dodier robert.dod...@gmail.com wrote: On 2014-10-24, Jakob Kroeker kroe...@uni-math.gwdg.de wrote: I'm doing this: since in the recent project I ran into many bugs in a well-known CAS, and now I do not trust any function I use and started to look actively for bugs (testing and code reviewing) and discovered about 100 bugs during the last year. Some code parts (which exist and were used for more than 10 years) I checked, reach an error rate about 5 bugs per 1000 lines. Sage builds on top of this CAS and probably on top of other buggy packages. Erm, well, if this unnamed package is Maxima, I hope you'll share the I think he is referring to Singular. fruits of your labors and file bug reports for the bugs you found. I can't promise that we'll be able to fix them soon, but we'll try. best Robert Dodier -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
