Harald Schilly wrote:
> Nice and interesting article on everything2.com about free maths
> software, a presentation by wolfram about mathematica and thoughts
> about the reason, why mathematica is still tolerated. Link to Sage
> included ;)
>
> http://everything2.com/title/mathematica%20and%20free%20software
Yes, quite an interesting article.
I know at UCL Wolfram Research wanted to come and give a presentation on
Mathematica and bring some freebies along. (We had a site license
anyway). I was quite keen on this, but when I discussed it with the lady
who administers the Mathematica license, her view was the uni could not
let all software companies have time to present their software, so in
her view it was unfair to let Wolfram Research do so. It seemed a
strange view to me, but I could not be bothered to argue with her.
The claim in that article that you can't see a single line of
Mathematica's source code is not exactly true - or is at least open to
interpretation, as some of the packages are written in Mathematica with
the Mathematica code visible.
I can't argue with much else though.
Wolfram Research do a hard-sell with Mathematica. I personally think
Sage needs to do this. Wolfram Research have at least one employee who
regularly edits the Mathematica page (and admits he is employed by
them), and another I suspect is an employee too.
Compare the features in Wikipedia for Sage and Mathematica.
-------- Mathematica Wikipedia page-------------
Some features of Mathematica include[4]:
* Libraries of elementary and special mathematical functions
* 2D and 3D data and function visualization tools
* Matrix and data manipulation tools including support for sparse
arrays
* Solvers for systems of equations, ODEs, PDEs, DAEs, DDEs and
recurrence relations
* Numeric and symbolic tools for discrete and continuous calculus
* Multivariate statistics libraries
* Constrained and unconstrained local and global optimization
* A programming language supporting procedural, functional and
object oriented constructs
* A toolkit for adding user interfaces to calculations and applications
* Tools for image processing [5]
* Tools for visualizing and analysing graphs
* Data mining tools such as cluster analysis, sequence alignment
and pattern matching
* Libraries of number theory functions
* Continuous and discrete integral transforms
* Import and export filters for data, images, video, sound, CAD,
GIS, document and biomedical formats
* A collection of databases of mathematical, scientific, and
socio-economic information (see below)
* Support for complex number, arbitrary precision and symbolic
computation for all functions
* Notebook interface for review and re-use of previous inputs and
outputs including graphics and text annotations
* Technical word processing including formula editing and automated
report generating
* Tools for connecting to SQL, Java, .NET, C++, FORTRAN and http
based systems
---------------------
Now compare that to the Sage page on Wikipedia:
-------------Sage page on Wikipedia -------------------
Features
Sage combines various modes of usage for different applications.
* It provides a notebook document interface.
* It provides a text-based command line interface.
* It includes MoinMoin as a Wiki system for knowledge management.
* It is possible to embed Sage inside LaTeX documents.
* It is possible to use sliders as input for calculations.[4]
* It provides support for distributed computing.
* Sage provides interfaces to some third-party software like
Mathematica, Magma, and Maple, which allows users to combine software
and compare output and performance. It is thus also a "front-end" to
other mathematical tools similar to GNU TeXmacs.
---------------------------------------------
Note how the page on mathematica says "Some features" which clearly
implies the real list is longer. The Sage page does not do that.
I'm not an expert on Sage, and will not be using it until I've sorted
out the Solaris issues. But what of those features of Mathematica could
be added to the Sage page on Wikipedia??
Lets 'sell' the software a bit more. Perhaps not the hard-sell WRI do,
but promote it more.
Dave
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