On Sun, 9 Dec 2007, William Stein wrote: > The top article at TG Daily (whatever that is) is about Sage: > > http://www.tgdaily.com/ > > The link to the article: > > http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35187/113/
Author's opinion: "First and foremost, they are closed source entities. Any mathematician using commercial software would have no way of finding out how the machine arrived at the particular result." <snip> "I remember using Mathematica and Maple when I was in college. They were wonderful! But, I never thought for one instant ever that I would be using a computer tool to provide any type of actual proof. Everything I did on the computer, even back then in the early 1990s, was done entirely for one purpose: quick and dirty testing. As a Physics/Math major, I still had to go through the rigors of doing everything long-hand. It is for this reason I don't really see much validity in Stein's first point. However, I definitely see the added value in being able to look at the software to see exactly how the numbers were arrived at." It is not clear to me what the author refers to as "Stein's first point." As one advances through graduate school and beyond, computers become an indispensable part and parcel of learning and research. Undergraduate students are taught the theory of the subject "by doing everything long-hand" and the computer is often not used as a tool to further learning. It appears that the author's opinion is purely based on his experience as an undergraduate student and should be discounted for being ill-formed. Regards, Ifti --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
