Hi, Gregory Bard sent me a very nice email comparing his book to the "Calcul avec Sage" and explaining how the audience for the two books are related.
William ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Gregory Bard <ba...@uwstout.edu> Date: Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 3:22 PM Subject: Re: [sage-devel] Re: Maple versus Mathematica To: William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> Hi there. I very much apologize for the late reply. This is the busiest time of the year for me. "Calcul avec Sage" is an amazing work. Being for an audience in France, it is going after the French curriculum. It assumes a level of sophistication that is equivalent to a certain point in an American math major's or physics's majors education. Some of the material would be suitable for Calculus III, Differential Equations, or Discrete Math, which are very common 200-level courses. The remainder, probably the majority, is more at the 400-level in our system. "Sage for Undergraduates" is aiming only a single level lower, at the Calculus II / Calculus III level. However, the issue is that I was hoping to meet the needs of students in engineering, finance, chemistry, and maybe the most mathematical of economics PhD students. By having a broader audience, that means my book is a full two levels lower. In other words, a sophomore mathematics major should find my book "a breeze" but "useful and informative." Perhaps someone from the nearby disciplines would find my book "challenging but useful." I think "Calcul avec Sage" would, after translation, be challenging for an American sophomore math major, suitable for a junior math major, and extremely handy for a senior math major. Physics majors would rate the book similarly, perhaps with a slight offset. Engineering majors would experience some substantial challenges, and for chemistry and finance, I would upgrade this to "rather challenging." An economics major would probably be demolished by "Calcul avec Sage." Also, my tone is very casual and informal, whereas Calcul is scholarly, but still very readable. I found the French used in "Calcul avec Sage" to be very readable and crisp, without the excessive use of minor subjunctive tenses found in some other French academic writing. I enjoyed working with that book when writing mine. An important variable would be the work of Joyner on differential equations (which is in print, coauthored with Marshall Hampton), and "Differential Calculus and Sage" (coauthored with William Granville). Those are books for DiffEq and Calc I, as course textbooks, but using Sage. That avenue to me seems to be most fruitful. After all, we've seen the success of Beezer's book on Linear Algebra. Of course, all this is my opinion. I think I'd like to add another 12 projects to "Sage for Undergraduates" for the second edition, but I ran out of time---and honestly I kind of ran low on creativity. I think that the existing projects are high quality, but too few---being 6 or 7 depending on how you count. By the way, thanks for all your support during the "Sage for Undergraduates" process. The book would not exist at all without you and your introducing me to Ina Mette. I am very grateful for your support. If I can clarify with more details, please email me!! ---Greg p.s. Again, apologies for the late reply. On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 8:54 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > Greg, > > Might you have any comments on the relationship in terms of scope of > your book to Zimmerman et al's "Calcul mathématique avec Sage"? This > came up in a discussion on sage-devel about translation. > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Bruno Grenet <bruno.gre...@gmail.com> > Date: Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 6:09 AM > Subject: Re: [sage-devel] Re: Maple versus Mathematica > To: sage-devel@googlegroups.com > > > > Le 01/12/2014 08:53, Nathann Cohen a écrit : >> >> Kanappan wanted to work on an english translation at some point, but there >> was no news since and he work in Canada nowadays. Not sure that he has a lot >> of time for that. >>> >>> I guess the number of available books on Maple and >>> Mathematica is a reason for some teachers to choose these languages. To my >>> mind, it would be much more efficient (though maybe more work too) than a >>> marketing document! >> >> The good thing is that we do not even have to chose between the two. > > > Of course! As a first step for a translation, we should maybe > investigate to find an appropriate free software to support > collaborative translation. I guess it is a huge work to do it alone, > it is maybe more feasible if we are a group of people working on this. > > Yet I now remember the existence Gregory Bard's "Sage for > Undergraduates" that has a similar goal, making a translation of > "Calcul mathématique avec Sage" less needed. > > Bruno > > -- > 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/d/optout. > > > -- > William Stein > Professor of Mathematics > University of Washington > http://wstein.org > > > -- > William Stein > Professor of Mathematics > University of Washington > http://wstein.org -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. 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