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SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

sagemath.org

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Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#31

Hi - I am the guy who started Sage. If you have any questions I can try to answer them here.

Just want to say thanks. Sage is the best thing that exists when it comes to creating a proof of concept in a cryptographic attack. I’ve used your thing for years and pretty much everyone in the cryptanalysis field use it. Good job.

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#33

Hi - I am the guy who started Sage. If you have any questions I can try to answer them here.

I made this comment below, but about 6 or so years ago, I found it could be used for science and engineering purposes like solving ODEs but it seemed a little bit rough at that. Today, is it improved for use for science types? Do Sage and Cocalc find users in this area?

I am a pure mathematician (number theorist) and the vast majority of the 600+ Sage developers over the years come from research mathematics. We generally view the numerical python ecosystem (numpy, scipy, pandas, etc.) as the place where development on engineering code happens for Python. So Sage itself isn't directly better for engineering, but I think the Python ecosystem has overall improved during the last six years...

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mathematica is optimized for giving you results you need in undergrad classes What makes you think this? Mathematica is used in all sorts research projects, technical fields, finance, and so on. I've seen Mathematica required or recommended in many, many job listings, especially for quants. I've never seen Sage there. For evidence, here [1] is what you get for searching for Mathematica on Indeed.com. Note pretty muc…

Despite being the Sage fanboy in the thread, I have to admit that all the use I've seen of Sage has been academic or experimental; I haven't heard of anyone using Sage for statistics in any context, and not for quants or actuarial science or anything of the sort. I'd suggest that Sage is likely less good for those uses since Sage is good at the kinds of things you're likely to find academics use Sage for (e.g. tons o…

Indeed. Sage was written by and for academics in academia doing research in pure mathematics. There's also been a fair amount of work to make it usable for undergrad math courses (started originally by some undergrads I hired actually). The only significant overlap with industry in terms of dev support is probably crypto research... But the Python ecosystem overall is pretty strong in industry, and Sage is part of that ecosystem...

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#35
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know what you're doing the axiom bindings make it the most powerful cas in terms of symbolic manipulation. Mathematica is optimized for giving you results you need in undergrad classes. Sage is not optimized at all, but can solve problems useful to researchers. It's the difference between osx and linux.

>Mathematica is optimized for giving you results you need in undergrad classes What makes you think this? Mathematica is used in all sorts research projects, technical fields, finance, and so on. I've seen Mathematica required or recommended in many, many job listings, especially for quants. I've never seen Sage there. For evidence, here [1] is what you get for searching for Mathematica on Indeed.com. Note pretty muc…

The languages themselves. To evaluate most simple integrals in mathematica you just put them in and all the corner cases are assumed away for you. For sage and the axiom binding you need to make those assumptions explicit. Pretty much everything in mathematica assumes you're working on the real numbers, pretty much nothing in sage does: http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/tutorial/tour_rings.html

Most math quants use is at the undergrad level, the finance industry in general is pretty backwards. A very large chunk of it is run on spreadsheets that are passed around in emails. I've worked in it and having seem what it takes to run some of the clients spreadsheets still gives me nightmares.

Again, the difference between osx and linux.

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To clarify what I mean by undergrad level: Something that is taught to some undergrads in some degree.

Someone who specialized in pure symbolic mathematics is likely to see integrals in their last year that other people will not see until they start doing postdoc work.

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unfortunately forced to use Mathematica because my scientific collaborators do so. While I have become very proficient at it, I don't like the interface or the language very much. Its a functional language put into an interface suitable for iterative programming. Loading external libraries is very non-intuitive, and just being able to separate a single program over many files that you can simultaneously edit is…

I got my PhD in computational plasma physics in a group that heavily used matlab. I'm lucky enough that my advisor was okay with me using numpy and friends instead as long as my plots and figures looked okay. Today, I run a one-man show for my post-doc doing simulations for an experimental group, so I thankfully get to continue this mode of work. And thank god I didn't have to face losing the ability to run my script…

I used Matlab in undergrad and Python a lot in industry. I got a Mathematica license recently being impressed with the documentation and the sheer breadth of stuff built into the language in a consistent manner. I ran into an issue when I found out that my license could only have 4 kernels activated at a time. I was able to close out the old sessions with the task manager, but I almost (exaggeration) punched my computer when the message popped up about licensing. Wtf? How much did I pay for this? Maybe I'll just stick with Python & Julia for what I need. I just traded one frustration for another.

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematica has lots of drawbacks, chief among which : if you write Mathematica code, you're building on top of an expensive, closed-source bunch of opaque algorithm that are neither guaranteed to be correct (can't see what they do) nor to continue behaving the way they did when you wrote your code (you're at the mercy of Wolfram changing what the code does). As far as I'm concerned, this essentially precludes doing…

You can say that, but I know lot of scientists and mathematicians who extensively use Mathematica in their research.

Don't other languages cause issues as well? If you wrote your python code in 2.7, it probably won't run in 3.6 without some modifications. Although, with Python everything is free and you can work anywhere without your boss needing to buy a license.

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#38
I downloaded Sage a few years ago, when I was getting into algebraic number theory. That was my first experience with Python, notebooks, numpy/scipy etc. Now I do almost all my programming - which is mostly maths-related graphics and image manipulation/processing, but all kinds of stuff - with Sage, in Cython. Usually with the CLI (and a text editor), occasionally with the notebook (to run individual lines and for the better error messages). I love being able to choose the C or Python way to do something. I can quickly get from initial idea to working program, and it runs fast.

It's just a pleasure to use. Thank you williamstein!!

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#39

Hi - I am the guy who started Sage. If you have any questions I can try to answer them here.

I've been looking at how wiki frameworks of today are really separated from data processing and mathenatics. I'm wondering if Sage could be used to solve arbitrary equations and output data that can then be graphed customely, something like how wolframalpha can take any equation and allows manipulation of data sets.

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#40

Hi - I am the guy who started Sage. If you have any questions I can try to answer them here.

So I used Sage a lot when I was an undergraduate, but now use anything else available because the Debian Archive never seems to have a working sagemath package (eg, I just typed "sagemath" into my terminal right now and got a crash on initilisation).

Something seems a bit weird about that to me, because when I used it ~8 years ago Sage was great and none of the features I care about changed.

Do can I get a meta-comment on why Sage might struggle to get packaged for Debian in the way that, eg, Octave/maxima/R/etc do?

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