Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[William Stein]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 10:03 AM, Nathann Cohen  wrote:
>> NetworkX is a standard package in Sage, so everything in NetworkX is in Sage.
>
> Sigh 

Moreover, what matters to me is the open source ecosystem, not just Sage.

My goal is (as it has been for a decade) to make the open source
ecosystem for mathematics as strong as it can possibly be.

 -- William

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Nathann Cohen]

> NetworkX is a standard package in Sage, so everything in NetworkX is in Sage.

Sigh 

Nathann

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[William Stein]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Nathann Cohen  wrote:
>> combinatorial geometry. Unfortunately I don't know enough about graph theory
>> to say how Sage compares with any other CAS, but I would think we compare
>> quite well. Nathann?
>
> I've got no idea. I never used the graph theory library of any other
> CAS, and the independent graph libraries I met were never as
> comprehensive as Sage in terms of "graph theory". What I mean by that

When we launched the graph theory part of Sage, Robert Miller and
Emily Kirkman did a survey of everything available at the time and
they did a fantastic job -- so here's snapshot of the situation in
2008, before Sage did any graph theory at all.

   https://wiki.sagemath.org/graph_survey

The executive summary was that at the time NetworkX already had
significant momentum.

> is that some, like NetworkX, are focused on 'networks' and so have
> some statistics defined on them that Sage does not have. I don't
> expect that any of these features would be hard to add in Sage,
> however.

NetworkX is a standard package in Sage, so everything in NetworkX is in Sage.

 -- William

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Stefan]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 at 1:43:02 AM UTC-6, Ralf Stephan wrote:
>
> On Monday, February 15, 2016 at 1:11:18 AM UTC+1, William wrote:
>>
>> Combinatorics is definitely the strongest part of Sage.
>
>
> Old school combinatorics perhaps. But see
> http://unsexy-science.blogspot.de/2015/10/survey-sage-and-enumerative.html
>

Ah yes, because enumerative combinatorics isn't old school at all... 

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Nathann Cohen]

Yo,

> combinatorial geometry. Unfortunately I don't know enough about graph theory
> to say how Sage compares with any other CAS, but I would think we compare
> quite well. Nathann?

I've got no idea. I never used the graph theory library of any other
CAS, and the independent graph libraries I met were never as
comprehensive as Sage in terms of "graph theory". What I mean by that
is that some, like NetworkX, are focused on 'networks' and so have
some statistics defined on them that Sage does not have. I don't
expect that any of these features would be hard to add in Sage,
however.

Nathann

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Travis Scrimshaw]

>
> Combinatorics is definitely the strongest part of Sage.
>
>
> Old school combinatorics perhaps. But see
> http://unsexy-science.blogspot.de/2015/10/survey-sage-and-enumerative.html
>

We also have strong support for algebraic combinatorics with symmetric 
functions and its well-known/studied generalizations. There is also a lot 
of code by Jean-Baptiste for other combinatorial Hopf algebras. We also 
have good support for combinatorial representation theory and some support 
for combinatorial geometry. Unfortunately I don't know enough about graph 
theory to say how Sage compares with any other CAS, but I would think we 
compare quite well. Nathann?


For my part, I would really love it if those who know the code 
> involved could finally get rid of the  broken functions that 
> everybody inherit from element: 
>
 

N, base_extend, base_ring, db, dump, dumps, is_zero, n, 
> numerical_approx, rename, reset, subs, substitute. 


+1 Most of those functions come from old-Sage, where they are all 
implemented in the common base class Element. The rename function should 
remain there because it allows us to call a SageObject whatever we want, 
often to shorten them for demos (quite useful). Many of them should be 
moved to the appropriate category or inserting a new ABC into the 
hierarchy. It just takes some time and effort to do this kind of 
maintenance to make sure nothing will break.

Best,
Travis


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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Thierry Dumont]

Le 15/02/2016 08:27, Daniel Krenn a écrit :
> On 2016-02-15 06:25, Jori Mäntysalo wrote:
>> On Sun, 14 Feb 2016, William Stein wrote:
>> Shall we teach Python in the process of teaching Sage?
> 
> At least, I do in my first year's course.
> 
> D
> 
And one argument for teaching Sage at undergraduate level is precisely
that students learn Python when they learn Sage. Not all will become
mathematicians, not all will even become scientists, but at least they
will have learn some important language, not these @!&! Maple or
Mathematica languages.

t.

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<>

Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Ralf Stephan]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 at 1:11:18 AM UTC+1, William wrote:
>
> Combinatorics is definitely the strongest part of Sage.


Old school combinatorics perhaps. But see
http://unsexy-science.blogspot.de/2015/10/survey-sage-and-enumerative.html

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Daniel Krenn]

On 2016-02-15 06:25, Jori Mäntysalo wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Feb 2016, William Stein wrote:
> Shall we teach Python in the process of teaching Sage?

At least, I do in my first year's course.

D

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Daniel Krenn]

On 2016-02-15 07:56, Nathann Cohen wrote:
> -> We write to the guys who complain about the software and ask
> them to give us more concrete examples, so that we learn and fix them.
> The first one, the guy who mentions bad doc and useless functions
> surely has some stories to tell..
>
> If some of you like the idea, I really don't mind trying to ask the
> guys on the thread to tell their stories.

+1

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Nathann Cohen]

> There's a big reddit discussion in which a lot of people say
> not-so-nice  things about Sage:
>
>  
> https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/45q7j1/sagemath_open_source_is_now_ready_to_compete_with/

What do you think about doing something smart?

-> We write to the guys who complain about the software and ask
them to give us more concrete examples, so that we learn and fix them.
The first one, the guy who mentions bad doc and useless functions
surely has some stories to tell..

For my part, I would really love it if those who know the code
involved could finally get rid of the  broken functions that
everybody inherit from element:

N, base_extend, base_ring, db, dump, dumps, is_zero, n,
numerical_approx, rename, reset, subs, substitute.

You will see them in combinatorial objects (there is no notion of .n()
there, e.g. Partition object), you will see them in places where no
base ring makes sense (PermutationGroupElement has a .base_ring), you
will see them in immutable objects (no 'rename'), you will see them
where no substitution makes sense.

Those functions raise exceptions when called, and do not make sense.

Additionally, it is important to remember for whoever implements
public methods in *very* generic classes that the method names must
also make sense in the context of subclasses, and that this is *very*
hard to ensure.

If some of you like the idea, I really don't mind trying to ask the
guys on the thread to tell their stories.

Nathann

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Jori Mäntysalo]

On Sun, 14 Feb 2016, William Stein wrote:


There's a big reddit discussion in which a lot of people say
not-so-nice  things about Sage:

https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/45q7j1/sagemath_open_source_is_now_ready_to_compete_with/


Shall we teach Python in the process of teaching Sage?

It should be clear that a language desinged for one purpose is (at least 
slightly) better for that purpose than any generice language like Python. 
OTOH Python is not that bad, so learning it may help CS students in other 
tasks too.


 * * *

What is first contact point between Sage and a student?

I think it may be a course of 1) linear algebra, 2) analysis, 3) group 
theory or 4) graph theory. So we should think about how easy it is for a 
student to 1) solve an equation of form Ax=b where A is 3x3 matrix, 2) 
compute derivates of sin(x^2) and (sin x)^2, 3) compute subgroups of S3 
and 4) check planarity of a given graph.


--
Jori Mäntysalo

Re: [sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[William Stein]

On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 4:00 PM, Travis Scrimshaw  wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, February 14, 2016 at 5:32:34 PM UTC-6, William wrote:
>>
>> There's a big reddit discussion in which a lot of people say
>> not-so-nice  things about Sage:
>>
>>
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/45q7j1/sagemath_open_source_is_now_ready_to_compete_with/
>>
>
> If someone doesn't like the documentation or feels it is lacking, they
> should contribute by giving changes and adding (thematic) tutorials... I
> thought that's one of the benefits of open-source software.

That's definitely 100% fine if our target audience is only research
mathematicians.  However, I aspire to create something that is very
valuable far beyond that target audience.   If I can make money from
SageMathCloud, then I'll be able to make it so sometimes people can
focus on writing better Sage documentation and exposition instead of
teaching sometimes ("teaching buyout").  At least that is my hope.
Actually, this should start happening soon -- if you know of anybody
who you think might be able to do something really good, please email
me.

> Also, yay for the combinatorics mention (and in my bias opinion, is the best
> place for doing combinatorics). Wikipedia currently only lists Sage as being
> the only general-purpose CAS which supports matroids.

Combinatorics is definitely the strongest part of Sage.  You guys have
a fantastic community and have accomplished a huge amount.   I wish
computational number theory wasn't so fragmented still.

>
> Best,
> Travis
>
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[sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[Travis Scrimshaw]

On Sunday, February 14, 2016 at 5:32:34 PM UTC-6, William wrote:
>
> There's a big reddit discussion in which a lot of people say 
> not-so-nice  things about Sage: 
>
>  
> https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/45q7j1/sagemath_open_source_is_now_ready_to_compete_with/
>  
>
>
If someone doesn't like the documentation or feels it is lacking, they 
should contribute by giving changes and adding (thematic) tutorials... I 
thought that's one of the benefits of open-source software.

Also, yay for the combinatorics mention (and in my bias opinion, is the 
best place for doing combinatorics). Wikipedia 
 currently only 
lists Sage as being the only general-purpose CAS which supports matroids.

Best,
Travis

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[sage-devel] Re: sage on hacker news right now...

[William Stein]

There's a big reddit discussion in which a lot of people say
not-so-nice  things about Sage:

 
https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/45q7j1/sagemath_open_source_is_now_ready_to_compete_with/

"Enjoy",

 -- William


On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 7:40 PM, William Stein  wrote:
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11078220
>
> --
> William (http://wstein.org)



-- 
William (http://wstein.org)

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