On 01/ 2/11 06:24 AM, William Stein wrote:
On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Dr. David Kirkby
<david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote:
You may recall some discussions some time ago about using WolframAlpha to
make comparisons with Sage results. Alex Ghitza in particular thought we
might be breaking the terms of the usage. I asked Wolfram Research, and
here's their reply. (What I asked is written below their reply).
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [WR #2158917] Could you please clarify terms of use for
WolframAlpha
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:20:23 -0600
From: Jessica Helfrich via RT<permissi...@wolfram.com>
Reply-To: permissi...@wolfram.com
To: david.kir...@onetel.net
Dear Dr. David Kirkby,
Thank you for your inquiry. We are happy to allow Wolfram|Alpha links and
results to be used for the limited purpose of non-automated querying for
verification and bug-testing purposes within the Sage test suite. We trust
Note the "non-automated" part. Perhaps this means they don't give
permission to do something like:
for n in range(100):
f = random_function()
if numerical_compare(f.differentiate(algorithm='maxima'),
f.differentiate(algorithm='wolfram|alpha')):
print f
I don't blame Wolfram Research for not permitting automated testing, since it
could easily use a lot of their bandwidth and computing resources. You show 100
functions, but what's to stop one doing 1,000,000 and letting everyone who
doctests Sage run 1,000,000 tests. It would use too much of their resources.
I guess you can do something like this:
sage: some_input_line
some_output
and just happen to verify that with Wolfram|Alpha for yourself (say
during the review process). Perhaps you could put a comment like
this:
sage: some_input_line # test verified using Wolfram|Alpha
some_output
To me that is worthwhile. It means some tests can be verified by software which
is largelly developed independently of Sage. It does not require access to
Mathematica to execute the tests.
When we add some comments to test code, we should let Wolfram Research know of
some of the examples of where this has been useful, as requested. They have been
helpful to us - let's do likewise for them.
However, it sounds like you also don't get permission to do this:
sage: some_input_line(...) == wolfram_alpha('....') # optional -- internet
Agreed, and as I say, I don't blame them.
and actually run such tests.
-- William
Dave
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
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A: Top-posting.
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Dave
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