Slashdot Mirror
Open Source 'Sage' Takes Aim at High End Math Software
coondoggie writes "A new open source mathematics program is looking to push aside commercial software commonly used in mathematics education, in large government laboratories and in math-intensive research. The program's backers say the software, called Sage, can do anything from mapping a 12-dimensional object to calculating rainfall patterns under global warming."
Plus, its creators' heads can probably fit through normal-sized doorways.
Is there any category of commercial software that can't
be challenged by free software?
but I thought Doc only just figured out the 4th.
Downloadable for Linux, Mac, and the other one:
http://sagemath.org/
As an international evil mastermind I have numerous plans which require advanced mathematical calculations and simulations to be performed (wiping out the human race, transmogrifying all kittens into war machines, etc - the usual kind of stuff).
I was wondering if the license of this software will allow me to achieve my goals without giving up my principles and secrets?
liqbase
I haven't had a chance to play around with this yet, but if it's as good a replacement for Mat* as R is for S+ and SAS, I'm quite happy to see it. I'm sad that I'll probably never be able to touch it unless I change my job as I've been told it would, quite literally, require an act of Congress to allow us to use anything other than SAS for our work. It will still be great to have access to a (hopefully) well documented library of algorithms that I can tear into, instead of trying to cobble together things that seem good to me at the time. Huzzah, hip hip, and all those fun things.
How does sage compares with other mathematics FLOSS like maxima, axiom and yacas? Another question is how come they opted to start a new project instead of contributing to other already established projects?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
yeah, but can it do pretty graphs? Everyone knows that's what people are looking for: pretty 3D graphs.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
Someone tried to email these people, but then their post ended up not bumping the thread.
The site is already very slow, so posting the actual links.
http://www.sagemath.org
http://sage.math.washington.edu/sage
http://modular.fas.harvard.edu/sage
http://www.opensourcemath.org/sage/
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/sage
http://sage.apcocoa.org
http://echidna.maths.usyd.edu.au/sage
http://sage.scipy.org/sage
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Jesus fucking christ, you just took a half-shitty joke idea and made it all the way 100% shitty.
"But if such a belief is true that "programs are mathematical algorithms" it should be provable."
Isn't it more a philosophical issue than a mathematics issue?
I think the difference may be execution vs. underlying operation. I'd say that software is an algorithm, but those that don't program it wouldn't know that.
The thing is...programs are algorithms at their core, but to the user...well, a UI makes all the difference. And often the UI is a product of creativity. I mean, take Google, for example. Visiting their page auto-focuses you to the search box. I find this *tiny* feature to be incredibly useful as I can leave my hands on the keyboard and continue typing, yet that's not something a computer program would have generated. The part that is exposed to the user requires creativity to conceptualize and implement. I don't think that should be completely free of any copyright restrictions.
SAGE has been around for a long time. Will Stein's homepage seems to be down -- possibly slashdotted -- so I can't tell the exact date, but it's certainly been in existence at least since 2004.
I'd say yes.
.... calculate the slashdot effect.
This is just like GIMP trying to take on Photoshop. When you're a kid, Adobe prices seem so off-putting that you can't see why people wouldn't flock to the free alternative. When you're doing a real job involving print work, you simply don't think twice about paying Adobe for the required feature set, intuitive UI and better workflow.
So, kids will carry on pirating Adobe or paying a much reduced student price, then paying for it when they go into the real world; and the same goes for Maple, Matlab, Mathematica, or whatever.
Oh, yeah, the whole "open source" thing. Excepting core functionality, some of Mathematica and the majority of Maple is provided in source form. You can whine about needing peer review of implementation at all levels, but how many of you have inspected your CPU's microcode or circuit diagrams? At some point the line is drawn, and you combine a trust in the reputation of your vendor with the fact that usually you're prototyping and modelling. Things will be re-implemented and tested in many ways before your "final product" is out of the door (whether that's theoretical physics or an aeroplane).
I think a lot of us can agree that open source software like this should have been developed YEARS ago, so I'm glad to finally see a good alternative to MATLAB and Mathematica out, I was getting kind of tired of pirating my Mathematica software. Plus with the added benefit of being scripted in Python, I'm sure this project is going to take off like wildfire.
- Aetheral Research -
I curse both of you.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It includes maxima and a lot of other packages. It seems to me that Sage is an attempt to glue together the various existing free math packages using Python. I'm not sure what I think of it, it makes it somewhat confusing to get started with because it does so many different things.
sages goes in every field
posting anonymously for obvious reasons
You need to learn about the difference between copyright and patents.
http://www.sage.co.uk/home.aspx The various products (Line 50 etc) are generally referred to as "Sage".
Sage is interesting and has been around a while, but it isn't packaged by distros - probably because it requires lots of other programs (maxima etc) but modifies them all slightly.
Here is a full feature open source Visualization package. Though not quite the same as Sage, there are other options out there.
Pretty good math sofware and open source too: Octave home page. It's been around quite a while, and it's largely compatible with Matlab.
But I use Mathematica because it is full of functionality, fairly reliable, and has a very elegant programming paradigm. Also, as a student, it'll cost me $100-150, depending on where I live, for the lifetime of my studentship, assuming no site license; the kinds of business that run this software commercially really don't care too much about a $2500 license fee.
Free software isn't about price -- it is about freedom. One of the research groups at my university cannot use Mathematica since a few weeks because the license expired, and neither renewing the license nor contacting tech support has so far brought a solution.
Another no-go is that Mathematica 6 notebooks are not compatible with Mathematica 5 notebooks. Also, the unwillingness of Wolfram to timely fix bugs leading to wrong results is unacceptable. I could go on ranting like this, but recently I have completely switched to Maxima and have not regretted it.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Always sounded to me like saying that all works of literature are, are arrangements of words. And all words are public domain. The dictionary is prior art. So books shouldn't be copyrighted.
Algorithms IMHO are simply the words and sentences you use to make software, which is akin to a work of literature. At least it seems that way to me, anyways.
If we're going to beat software patents, it just seems like we should drop the algorithms argument because it seems a little flimsy.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It doesn't have to do with the boss. Certain industries require SAS. No, there's no way to hide the fact you didn't use SAS. You can do the work at first with another product, but you need to submit SAS code that allows others to reproduce results.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I am not personally involved with SAGE, but I know a little about it. Rather than being a totally new system in all respects (although there is certainly new code created for it) SAGE attempts to make use of the plethora of existing open source systems available already and provide a unified interaction environment for them. As it says above, SAGE takes aim at the functionality offered by commercial systems.
This is undeniably a practical approach that will benefit many research teams, and I am rooting for its success. My main concern with it is that by using a wide array of libraries/programs to cover broad functionality, it will become difficult to integrate results from one system into the computations of another. Different systems may make different default assumptions (sometimes very subtle ones) that other systems will not be aware of. Efforts like OPENMATH (http://www.openmath.org) that have attempted to define a protocol for exchange of mathematical information between systems have run into this before.
Unfortunately, any proper solution to that problem is likely to be even more work than re-implementing algorithms inside a single environment. A framework for a CAS that could handle such broad scope is a problem (Axiom probably comes the closest right now) so for problems that don't hit the more difficult situations SAGE will be very useful indeed, but it is something to bear in mind.
In the very long term, we need to integrate formal proof software concepts (ISABELLE, ACL2, COQ, etc.) with computer algebra systems in order to be able to trace any calculation back to its axiomatic roots at need - or, put another way, have the system be able to provide upon request correctness proofs of a result. There is a fair bit of literature on that and related topics, but it cannot be denied that the problem is an awesome one. In the meantime, SAGE is a very promising short term (practical) solution to real world problems.
SAGE's developers are also supporters of the idea of open source software in general, which is probably the most important aspect of the whole discussion: http://www.ams.org/notices/200710/tx071001279p.pdf
It may be argued that computers are not really an appropriate tool when truly "correct" mathematics must be relied upon. My response to that is that as problems of interest become ever more complex, limitations both of the human mind and the human life span will ultimately limit the problems we can solve unaided. The task for us now is to create a system we CAN trust to solve problems correctly, because someday we will have to trust it to solve problems we cannot handle. Some researchers would probably have a philosophical objection to that and define any problem human beings cannot solve and verify themselves as a problem where we will always be uncertain if it is really solved. The philosophical questions involved are fascinating for people who like that sort of thing. My take on it is such a system would be useful and is worth looking into.
SAGE is more pragmatic in its orientation, but that means for many (most?) people it is a project to watch and probably a product to use. Here's hoping they can build increased momentum!
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
have never heard of SciPy and Numeric Python. Numeric has been around for years and SciPy is usable but in development. Various Govt labs have been using Numeric for a long long time.
Sage includes SciPy and NumPy so it can make use of all the functionality that they provide. While a majority of the developers are "pure" mathematicians, there has been a lot more interest / work on the numerical side of things as of late.
--Mike (a Sage developer )
This should be used in all free software, from Firefox to KDE and from bc to cp. The user should be able to have a more direct access to source code to encourage more people study it and hack it. If Firefox users could move their mouse over a button and right-click and select "view source" to see the actual source code generating the button or the called methods, perhaps more people would feel more inclined to contribute to free software.
At present, the two main math software packages are Maple and Mathematica. Mathematica is entirely closed source. With Maple, most of the source code can be viewed (though it is copyrighted and cannot be copied). This means that you can check the algorithms used in Maple, but not in Mathematica.
There are some packages that are called by Maple that are closed source. For example, Maple calls the NAG Numerical Libraries for a substantial amount of its numeric computations; the NAG routines are closed source, but they are widely agreed to be the best on the planet, and Maple decided to rely on them.
Sage is interesting, but its functionality is very limited. In the (very?) long term, though, Sage might well pose a challenge to Maple and Mathematica. But in the meantime, I expect to continue to use Maple.
I think this is a great move and everyone should involve in it. Why I say this, because this is something much we needed at this point of the history.
I am sure hardware has gone to some extreme ends in doing the number crunching tasks.. in both accuracy and efficiency (less time in calculations). But still, this power is much un-tapped for some reason which I have no clue of.
While I was a college student, we were somewhat forced to use MATLAB as the default mathematics software. It was the case for most maths, control and communication related modules. MATLAB is quite easy in its commands and help catalog. Most importantly, it easy to view the results in many different forms and shapes (i.e. array, charts..). Also its a great array operation language.
But MATLAB suffers significantly in its computation speed. I am sure, pretty much all of the research community has noticed this. Yes, there are ways to over come this with minor coding tricks. But it won't shorten the time dramatically. The hard way to get a good processing speed is to buy the Distributing Computing package.. which is money (+ global warming).
I expect SAGE to concentrate on this speed issue. YES we can choose something like C++ or Fortran (I love those languages). But lets say, if you have to code something like a CDMA simulator (or any comms simulation model)... C++, Fortran maybe the toughest languges in coding and debugging (due to lack of results viewing capability).
The point here is not workflow or intuitive UI.
The point is, mathematics and other research rely more and more on computer algebra systems. Up to the point of including CAS code into proofs of theorems and other research paper. However the point of mathematical proof is that anyone with enough knowledge can follow it and verify it step by step. If commercial closed source software is part of mathematical proof, proof is becoming essentially unverifiable. Mathematical theorem become hostage of software owner. That is a step toward complete privatization of science.
On of the ugliest incident happens then owner of your favorite Mathematica Steven Wolfram claimed ownership of proof of CA rule 110 universalty and obtained a court order preventing researcer from the publishing the proof in the conference proceedings. To publish it as the Mathematica code in his books.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
One nice feature that Sage has is its web-based interface -- the Sage Notebook. This inteface was designed with the Google documents interface in mind in terms of sharing and collaborating on worksheets. The Sage notebook also provides a web-based interface to most every piece of math software out there (so long as you have it installed on your computer): Maple, Magma, Mathematica, Matlab, Axiom, Maxima, Octave, Macauly2, Singular, etc.. Or, in one workshhet, one can have one cell be a Mathematica cell while the next one be a Maple cell. This interface does not depend at all on the math functionality of Sage.
This is one area which could use some help from a web developers familiar with Python and AJAX -- a background in math is not needed at all. Eventually, we'd like to split off the interface into its own project since it pretty useful on its own.
--Mike
Took 5 seconds with google, mostly because I type slow and am on dialup
Nasa open source
Yorick Unofficial Home Page
I am a mathematician and shelling out a few hundred or even thousand bucks for software is not a problem. A problem is that there is that there is a gap in tools. There is one tool missing that would make math much more accessible. The tool an IDE. Most IDEs that exist for witting math are modeled after software development IDEs. But those do not at all parallel how mathematicians think or write. We end up with a lot of paper and books in higher math (post introductory undergrad level) that are written in plain text. Diagrams are very few and cross-references are often unintuitive. If there was a tool that allowed to write math as easily as code is written in vi (or emacs... please wait until Sunday morning for this flame war... that's what Sunday mornings are for), to create diagrams as easily as AutoCad creates mechanical drawings, that would realize that an item of text maybe best served with a commutative diagram (which it would immediately offer to draw) and that another part of the text is probably a bibliography reference, then math would be developed as well as software is. Basically, all the tools out there are still trying to give mathematicians the freedom to write anything that would write on paper. There is no tool that is really context-aware. If such a tool did exist, it would leave all the others in the dust. Cost would not matter. It would be to Mathematica what KDE is to Windows desktop. Perhaps, this is too much to ask for. Perhaps, a better start would be a language that captured the thought process of writing math the way that emacs captured the thought process of witting different types of text. And no TeX is not it. TeX only helps to typeset math to make it look pretty. It doesn't make witting math on a computer easier than witting it by hand.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I work in Europe, as a researcher, and two and three years ago, the Mathworks (the company behind Matlab) decided we weren't eligible to research/education prices anymore. They did the same with a bunch of other institutes (in Europe, I don't know about the US). We operate an experimental reactor, whose control is largely based on Matlab programs. Some of these were developed a long time and people left, or retired. There's a lot to be said about the way this was handled by our management, but that's the way it is. So, we had to admit we were screwed, having to pay the price. We met with the Mathworks representatives, and I have to say all I saw a bunch of arrogant jerks.
Anyway, since then, we've renewed our licences every year, and we've been looking for an alternative. We even tried to migrate the whole lab to Scilab but that didn't work out (mostly because of the limited capabilities of Scilab in scientific plotting and GUIs). Some of us use Python + Matplotlib (I'm a big fan), some (often the same people) use Octave. Although we've converted some individuals, we weren't able to find a software which could be used by everyone in the lab as a substitute to Matlab. This is frustrating, as the vast majority of people here use only a fraction of the capabilities of Matlab.
I for one, would be really happy if we had something to replace Matlab, be it Sage or whatever else...
One example that comes to mind is Scilab vs. Matlab. Scilab does everything my students need to do. On the other hand, the man pages are a nightmare if you aren't already a mathematician. If my students want to get some filter coefficients, Matlab is a lot friendlier and easier to use because the tools have a gui frontend.
If you're an expert, it doesn't matter whether you use FOSS or commercial. FOSS is often just as powerful. If you are clueful about math and programming, you don't need Photoshop or 3D-Studio. The problem is that most graphic artists shouldn't have to also have a math degree and a computer science degree.
Another example would be Ubuntu vs. Gentoo. It could be argued that Gentoo produces a much better installed system. On the other hand, it could also be argued that 99.99% of people are much better off with Ubuntu.
The success of Sage won't be determined by how powerful it is. As others have observed, it is largely a mashup of existing stuff. Its success will be determined by how easy it is to use. If someone can put together some decent documentation and a semi-intuitive UI, it will take off. Otherwise, I can't see much reason for most people to use it.
Theoretically no, but in reality probably yes.
There are some applications that are simply very difficult to make work in an open source or free software model. CAD software comes to mind immediately. Creating a CAD system is highly specialized, requires serious math skillz, and the end application is large and complicated (on par with operating systems or top tier database software) so a good team is required. There also are likely to be patent issues to work around as well. From a user's perspective changing CAD systems has VERY VERY high switching costs, require a LOT of training, and the user bases are quite small. Sure there are a few free/open-source CAD packages out there but they are toys compared with CATIA or ProEngineer or even AutoCAD. Don't get me wrong, lots of firms would love to not have to spend huge $ on an expensive 3D modeling package like CATIA. It costs a bloody fortune. But there just aren't enough programmers out there with the right skills and the itch to create a CAD package that will replace the commercial stuff any time soon.
Games seem to be another area where free software struggles to challenge commercial offerings. High development costs, small group of available programmers, requires artistic/creative skills not widely possessed by programmers, and other reasons besides.
Basically, the more specialized the software or the more artistic content required, the more difficult it seems to be to develop under a free model. Not impossible mind you, just more difficult; sometimes to the point where it is not practical even if it is theoretically possible.
Kitten are (...) impervious to all types of magic, including magic cast by flapjacks. Physical combat is ineffective againts them, so the only conceivable way to defeat a kitten is to trap it in a laundry basket.
Sources and further reading: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Kitten#Kitten_Feeding_Behaviour
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
The Mac PPC version seems to be amiss. During extraction, I noticed an .exe file (Wine routines?) but after completion, there was no Sage icon to click on, per the instructions. Might be a link to the wrong package?
May I ask what considerations were made with respect to the name? Give that Sage plc. manufactures accounting software, is this not liable to lead to legal problems, and possibly confusion?
Your criticisms stem from the inadequacies of the open source movement which casts aside software freedom in pursuit of a philosophy focused on developmental methodology. In fact you echo one of the points of that essay on how the two movements' philosophies differ irreconcilably: anyone who pushes aside software freedom will think a reliable and powerful non-free program is preferred to a less capable less reliable free program (free software being software we can choose to improve to make it reliable and powerful). If you were taking software freedom and social solidarity more seriously, you would realize how petty concerns about licensing costs are (free software advocates strongly push for making as much money as you can with free software) and how much more important it is to treat one's fellows as friends and neighbors. Part of this means not trapping your fellows into a monopoly for support, recognizing that no proprietor is truly interested in your project or your well-being as a user (except to the extent that leads to giving them more control), and that therefore settling for partial freedom is unwise.
And even within the meager realm of popularity (which is truly a secondary concern), we can see FLOSS is the primary choice on the server: email servers and web servers, for instance, are two major parts of what most people do on the Internet daily and they rely on FLOSS to make sure things are reliable. I see more people using OpenOffice.org and Firefox, among other desktop and client-side programs.
So no, pursuing software freedom respects the most important points. Free software addresses challenging and important considerations in society. A technocratic approach centered on development efficiency misses those points.
Digital Citizen
I knew they had a decent open source effort, just couldn't remember the URL off the top of my head, had to look it up again. Hopefully a little /. exposure will get them some more dev action, because, ya, FOSS is a good idea overall, space-or anything else.
I think they should change the name.
Why don't people name software after dinosaurs? Come on t-rex, now how cool would that be :-D
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I have the same problem with the name "sage" as I do with maxima: it is difficult to use google to find out what work other persons have done.
Results 1 - 10 of about 7,660,000 for maxima
Results 1 - 10 of about 8,890,000 for sage
Couldn't they have named it "famkserigj" or something unique? I never have this problem with Ogg Vorbis.
It goes in all fields.
Just stay away from iTunes or Quicktime, unless your diabolical scheme doesn't involve nuclear or chemical weapons. The kitten thing should be fine.
I'm not sure even mathematics is entirely non-patentable these days; for example, take a look at US patent 7133568.
Not on Slashdot. We don't care. We don't like either one. So there...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
nt
It better have UI elements that are not frustrating to use and lots of good documentation, otherwise it's going down in the annals of time no matter if it can solve global warming. A Web-based product doing this? !? ... hopefully they've separated the domain logic from the UI and can map other UIs on top. That would help make it more ubiquitous.
I realize I don't have to hope -- I can look at the source code and this is a good thing.
But what is the goal of the marketing? To increase the consumption of bandwidth, or to put free software into actual use outside of an evaluation scenario? If a user downloads Blender, says "fuck it" after going through the first tutorial, and then goes and pirates something, what has anyone accomplished?
No, it doesn't make you "think". It makes you spew mindless Timecube-esque drivel onto your keyboard.
Anyone know if any trouble is expected from The Sage Group over trademarks? (I.e. Sage 500, Sage Donations 50, etc.)
The Sage Group makes small to mid-market accounting solutions, and many of their products contain the name "Sage."
If this isn't a problem, can I make a cell modelling program and call it MicroSoft Modeller? (i.e. a micro-level modeller for soft tissue.)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why does it take 2 freakin Gig to install? What's in there, a high resolution feature-length documentary of the making of?
Since the Sage servers are being hit pretty hard, here are torrents for the files.
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-use_this_on_sage_dot_math-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-x86_64-Linux-debian.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian32-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian64-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-ppc-PowerMacintosh-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.5-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-rhel-32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15.tar.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-ubuntu32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
--Mike
I can't wait for this! Free the data, then free the tools!
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-use_this_on_sage_dot_math-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-x86_64-Linux-debian.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian32-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian64-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-ppc-PowerMacintosh-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.5-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-rhel-32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15.tar.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-ubuntu32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-vmware-2.8.15.zip.torrent
Also, see http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-torrents.html .
--Mike
sage goes in every field
Besides this article being a duplicate I have some serious doubts whether the authors of SAGE have researched existing math software as serious as they should have.
The entire site is showing a weird perspective on the respectable and established science of automated proofs. Admittedly, demanding that automated proofs are both open-sourced and based on open-source programs is a good approach. But the list of programs mentioned there (Python, GAP, Singular, PARI, Maxima, SciPy, SAGE) does not thrill those who are serious about computer-assisted proofs. It must be said that the well-known commercial programs like Mathematica, Maple, Magma, etc. are equally unsuited for trustworthy proofs.
The reason is that all these systems are way too bloated and lack an axiomatic approach. Their intent is to manipulate symbolic terms easily. As such, they are good for assisting a mathematician proofing theorems or checking a proof. But there is another kind of systems that is being used for formalizing and verifying mathematical proofs on the computer. The intent is to define a set of axioms using a tiny engine, and from there derive small theorems, more theorems, and so on, until the final theorem has been proofed. The idea is that the system's kernel is so tiny it can be fully comprehended by individual mathematicians. If the proof can be constructed from a few sane axioms and runs through the computer, voila, that's a proof by computer. Freek Wiediejk has assembled a list of 100 famous theorems and their poofs. I am not able to find any of the systems in this list on the SAGE site. Why not? Are the authors really unaware of those systems? Aren't most (all?) of them open-source, too?
Any serious mathematician will not accept a proof carried out by Maxima or Maple, and having a system like SAGE that acts like a frontend to these is of no help at all. Besides, we already have Texmacs.
...Abstractions.
And that Sage is not enough capable of handling above the subset it is intended for, to prove software is mathematical algorithms, as so many argue.
However, that doesn't mean algorithmic proof is not possible. Only that abstraction must be considered in the calculation proofs.
That is the question. What makes Matlab so great (for me at least) is that I can sit down and just work. I dont have to fight with the syntax. I dont have to fight with the documentation. What I dont like about Matlab is how closed off it is to other apps/libraries (the price is an issue too). A good, functional open source alternative could fix this.
However, I tried out Numpy/SciPy about a year ago and again about an hour ago after I saw this article. I was hoping Sage would provide an "intersection" of sorts for Numpy/SciPy/VTK/R/Octave/etc. At least, that was my major issue about a year ago. There was so much disconnect I spent more time reading documentation and Googling than anything else. Alas, today was the same thing all over again.
One of the most common things I do in Matlab is solve Ax=b. So I made my 'A' matrix (3x3), my 'b' vector (3x1) and tried a "linalg.solve(A,b)". No dice. I got 2 blocks of Python error messages (yes, I checked my matrix dimensions and made sure I was using Matrix and not an array). The "final" error was something about "an undefined shape attribute in my b vector". Uh... yeah. I played with it for about an hour or so and then deleted it.
What has been done so far has promise, I think. But it needs to mature a lot more. In its present state I was left slightly annoyed with trying unsuccessfully to do something as simple as least squares regression.
Again, this problem goes to the heart of the issue. I have to be able to focus on my work. Matlab has issues for sure. But when I dont know how to do something in Matlab, or I hit a snag, 90% of the time Im "back to work" in ~5-10 minutes max. I'll check it out again in a year or so. Until then, Im using Matlab. Sorry.
Sage goes in the email field. #Fortune goes in the newfag field.
You are promoting reproducibility far beyond its practical reality. If an analysis program is shown to have severe defects, any paper whose analysis is tied to that package will come into disrepute, until either A) the analysis of the data presented is repeated with a different program (assuming the raw data remains available); or B) the whole experiment is repeated (possibly also bigger and better) and the conclusion is corroborated by independent research.
It would be nice to think that every research paper out there archives it's original data for all eternity, so that the analysis can be repeated by anyone who cares to do so at any point in the future, but this is not the world we presently live in.
In many cases, the raw data has privacy implications, and is quite a hassle to reliably and safely archive.
Science, in any case, does not depend upon reproducible analysis; it depends upon reproducible experimental protocols.
I am a huge believer that open source should set the precedent, where the data allows this, that the original data *is* archived, along with the tools of its analysis, so that past mistakes *can* be investigated at any point down the road. This doesn't come so much from the culture of science as you claim. It comes from the culture of openness and long-term accountability which tools like Sage promote.
Besides, in most cases it's a fiction that a calculation can be reproduced (by practical effort) at some distant point in the future. Platforms change, code experiences bit rot, essential libraries mysteriously vanish. TeX, in particular, is notable for bucking this trend, and not without a great deal of insularity in its design, which is the polar opposite of what Sage has set out to accomplish.
i've just installed it and the first thing i noticed is the google-docs/spreadsheed/notes-like interface. did they just copy it and removed the CSS or is there more behind? but anyway, would be very interesting to have google hosting this as an addition to their documents. online collaboration notebooks with that high level by them would be really interesting addition to their current stack of products (despite only interesting for a very small percentage of users, besides high school and college)!
...
and second the one big open source suite i'm missing is R (www.r-project.org) which would be a huge expansion in the field of statistics (data mining, analysis and so on) and visualization (ggplot2...)
How does this compare with something like MathXL or PH GradeAssist? I use those all the time and find them great programs.
Sage makes me think of traditional turkey dressing. Mmmmm!
I'm somewhat familiar with the math programs noted. I'm very familiar with the statistics programs such as SAS and SPSS. The programs that require you to learn and use a scripting language do not get as much use in the lab, as opposed to those that have a GUI interface with most of the functions in pull-downs. SPSS has this benefit over SAS. Even better, SPSS records everything you do in its scripting langauge, in a log file. This permits you to cut and paste its (self-written) scripts, use search-and-replace to change the variable names as needed, and put together a script for analyzing a large number of similar things, without having to actually learn the language.
I had to learn SAS, strictly with its scripting langauge, as an undergrad. I never used it again. I got SPSS as a grad student, and when it came time to teach statistics, I taught it with SPSS. People had more trouble with the concepts than they did with the analyses, the opposite of the problems I and others encountered previously.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
It's browser based, and you can try it online, so why are you asking?
False! Not every set can have a well defined ordering, the most well known set provably without a well defined ordering being the set of complex numbers.
and largely irrational distrust of any alternative offerings, whatever
the origin. Being "free" even adds greatly to the suspicion of FOSS within
their highly conventional outlook, wherein a high purchase price will naturally
equate with value. This kind of complacency represents as much a factor
in the rejection of FOSS as its putative inadequacy.
people who seldom "think twice" about purchasing commercial
software will tend to not "think twice" about much else, including their
own expertise and competency. I think your argument cuts both ways, but it a valuable contribution to this discussion. "You get what you pay for" is a popular yet narrow-minded view of the choices available to business and private consumers. One could argue equally that "you get more than what you give or share."
The point here is that a rational evaluation of resources should not be prejudiced by their source.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.