On Monday, September 30, 2013 5:13:12 AM UTC-7, kcrisman wrote: > > > Hi - I didn't see these responses, my RSS only updates now if there's a > new *thread*, very annoying... > > There are several models for rationales for gatherings. It might pay to >> distinguish among them. >> > > Exactly. I have no problem with the idea of Sage user groups - the local > R user group is robust (and I've given a talk about Sage there), as is a > Python one, I believe (which I haven't attended but maybe should), but I > think there are not going to be so many places a true Sage user group would > work. I like having the breakdown of the kinds one can imagine. >
I may be mistaken on this, but I suspect that users of R tend to be far more coherent in that they are centrally concerned with statistical methods, and that is what R is all about. Are there statistics specialists who are so far specialized that they are essentially speaking a different language from other specialists? By comparison, consider Maxima, which is of course only a part of Sage. There are parts of Maxima that I know very little about, and have no interest in learning more about. There are experts on those parts of Maxima who know very little about the rest of Maxima, and in fact seem to have their own separate language. I believe some of the people involved are indeed experts in other parts of Maxima and could give a tutorial. Others who could not. So I find it hard to believe that someone can speak authoritatively on "all" of Sage which would presumably include "all" of Maxima and "all" of a substantial number of other libraries or systems. In fact I recently came across an article that talks about Sage's simplifier, which apparently was (one of) the simplifiers in Maxima, and how the author's simplifier was better. If he had worked directly with Maxima, or were aware of the variations available either directly or indirectly through Sage, his article would have been, I think, quite different. > > I was suggesting that for people who would like #6 to happen once or twice > very close to them, we have a stable of semi-vetted people who would not > just be willing and able, but highly motivated to provide such tutorials > for those who don't happen to make whatever MAA or other events have been > done in the past. > Just as a for-instance, if someone asked for a speaker on one of the areas that Sage kicks over to Maxima, who would vet that speaker? > > This could be part of the new page Harald is proposing - "User Groups and > New User Workshops" maybe, and then we could post whatever workshops have > been offered and make very clear how you would get one to happen at your > institution/in your area. Complete with a link to a map of people you > could contact. If we were really slick it would be one of those things > where you (in the US) type in your ZIP code and it makes suggestions... > I still think this is not the right organizing principle. Could you see "Excel User Groups"? Or might you prefer "Civil Engineering with a session on "using Excel". Now you could have a conference on "how to implement spreadsheets like Excel" or "Lessons on Excel for novices". But something like "advanced users" learning how different applications, like chemistry, algebra, civil engineering, etc use Excel --- not such an attention grabber. That's my opinion, anyway. RJF > > - kcrisman > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
