In ... http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.math.symbolic/2005-12/msg00096.html
almost 10 years ago I asked the question, "If SAGE weren't free, would anyone pay for it?" (SMc -- a few?) and I pointed out " Government funding for people or projects will be a small percentage of the funding for pure mathematics. That's not much. And the future is pretty grim." William's summary of his NSF review (which undoubtedly had more details, but they may be irrelevant).. ... There were many [presumably more] qualified applicants... is likely a reflection of the NSF math program reviewers prejudices about what they deem "important". I think that we would generally assume that there are not a whole bunch of NSF proposals comparable to William's ... Persons X, Y, Z, and William are proposing to Enhance SAGE, and of these, the others are more qualified, or wrote better proposals. So it is lack of enthusiasm for William's specific idea, which I am guessing might something like this .. I'm going to investigate X and Y and Z mathematical questions which will be done on a computer system SAGE which needs to be developed and supported. [This tack has worked in the past] or SAGE is a great system used by many people (show evidence) and it should be supported because system support and development costs money. [Which traditionally doesn't fly -- NSF/math probably wants to support otherwise-starving mathematicians, not so much computers.] (There are occasionally other reasons for turning down an NSF proposal such as "the proposers are not qualified". I think these are irrelevant for William.) Should this proposal have been run past the computer science people at NSF? (Perhaps it was?) I don't think either of the two hypothetical proposals would fly there, but maybe for reasons that are not so obvious to readers here. Historically, at least, computer algebra system-ish proposals have been evaluated in a panel where a small minority (maybe 0) have sympathy for the topic. Instead the panelists would be keen on numerical computing, graphics, parallel/vector/network/super computing. Or possibly another panel with interests in asymptotic complexity theory, quantum computing, security, cryptography... The way the panelists view their obligations and the way they actually behave may be different. They view their obligations as choosing the best proposals. Being human, they are fallible. The reality is they may succumb to three temptations, perhaps unconsciously. (1) favoring proposals in areas that they are most familiar with, feeling more confidence in their judgments. Dismissing other areas as of course uninterested and therefore the proposals necessarily less qualified. (2) disqualifying proposals that are too close to some panelist's own personal expertise on the grounds that he/she (the panelist) could write a better proposal on the same topic, and perhaps next year he will, thanks to seeing this half-baked proposal on an idea that is so close to one of his own that he should have thought of it ... [rivalry? revenge?] (3) favoring proposals by famous / previously well-funded people or groups or laboratories or schools ... even if the specific proposal is more yada yada. Perhaps because dropping support from such a group would be an admission that previous heavy funding was a mistake, and they are really a bunch of losers, and who wants to admit that. Panelists are mostly drawn from recipients of previous NSF grants, but who of course are not in the current competition. I have served on panels a number of times. Perhaps William has, also? Or maybe the math people handle proposals differently. I am aware that other people share the views expressed above, but I haven't successfully googled really on-point comments. There is this, though.. http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2007/11/service-and-nsf.html My sympathies go out to people who have proposals rejected. Life is not fair, William. RJF On Friday, July 10, 2015 at 1:57:14 AM UTC-7, Dima Pasechnik wrote: > > Certainly, ODK will do Sage days, and fund US-based Sage devs > in other possible ways... > > On Thursday, 9 July 2015 10:26:31 UTC+1, Nathann Cohen wrote: >> >> Anyway, for me personally and SageMathCloud development, and also >>> support of Sage development at UW, this is a major blow. >>> >> >> Perhaps they did not understand what exactly was the difference between >> SMC and OpenDreamKit ? Fortunately, 8.4millions is far enough to share. >> >> Nathann >> > -- 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.
