>> Are there any other major test suite collections available? > >At present Maxima includes a copy of Michael Wester's test suite >which was the basis for his published review of computer algebra >systems from about 10 years ago. We haven't done anything with it >but I asked for and received permission from him to release it under >terms of GPL and it is now in Maxima CVS.
Yes, I did a set of tests for Michael years ago for the review. The Axiom version of those tests are in our test suite also. I'm looking for test suites against "standard" sources (like Schaums, Zwillinger, Kamke, etc) as well as other large collections of tests (e.g. Bondarenko). Ideally ALL computer algebra systems should test against the same published standard sets, a project I call "CATS" (Computer Algebra Test Suite). It only makes sense to have a fully vetted version of tests that people can use against all the systems. These tests should have the agreed-upon "correct" answers along with commentary about ranges, branch cuts, etc. Ideally these CATS documents would also present the algorithms in both mathematical terms and as software implementations. (I would support Sage's calc rewrites IF they were doing it to present the algorithms in some literate form for people to reference and learn. Sadly competition, not science, seems to be the driving motivation.) If we can collect such test sets and show that each system generates equivalent answers (a difficult problem given the zero equivalence issue), then people can feel SOME confidence that (a) they are getting reasonable answers (b) the systems are plug-equivalent This IS supposed to be computational mathematics and the answers are testable. In fact, I believe that NIST should fund such an effort to support both the quality of computational mathematics and the educational aspects of showing the "best of breed" computational algorithms. Tim --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
