On Dec 10, 2007 11:37 AM, Ondrej Certik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > 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. > > Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician, I am only a theoretical physics > graduate student. > > I think the author is actually right about this. I always found this > argument about "seeing inside the code to beleive a mathematical > proof" weak.
It is an argument that is *only* for research pure mathematicians. For them it actually is _very_ important. For everybody else the whole idea of mathematical proof is somewhat irrelevant, and that's fine with me (I understand it -- I do both pure and applied math, and enjoy both and see them as separate complementary pursuits). > > For me, the major point about Sage is: > > * open source (free) alternative to Mathematica/Maple/Matlab > * you can implement you own favourite thing that you need (be it > number theory, or some other things, or something in calculus, or > whatever) and Sage will include it, if it works and it's useful > * done be people, who know how to run opensource projects - release > early, release often, easy to install, easy to run, discussions in > public, etc. etc. Props to Michael A. :-) > I don't like the whole tone of the article though. Maybe Sage is > complex, but it's best as it could be and especially better than > anything else out there (opensource). So either we can do nothing and > continue using non-free Mathematica, or we can actually try something. Agreed :-) But at this point any publicity is good for sage, so I'm glad the article exists, even though it has a lame tone. -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
