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SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

sagemath.org

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Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#81
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quants build models using math far beyond what an undergrad learns, including tools such as martingales, stochastic calculus, Black-Scholes (and vast generalizations), Brownian motion, Stochastic differential Equations, numerical methods You absolutely don't need a PhD to learn those things. Black-Scholes and Brownian motion was covered in my undergrad courses and the rest of the topics you mentioned where covered in…

>You absolutely don't need a PhD to learn those things. True. You can learn anything without a PhD. A PhD requirement reduces the cost to hire qualified people. Instead of having to pay to interview 1000 people to get 5 you can interview 20. Companies recruit PhDs because they have amassed many techniques, and have modelling skills on average that are better than non-PhDs. There's also quite a difference between seei…

Companies recruit PhDs because they have amassed many techniques...

While everything you say is no doubt true, I've got a a lot of friends who have had no problem getting quant jobs in most major finance centers in Europe despite only having Masters degrees

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python3 support for Sage is close.

I came here hoping to read this. Thank you.

FWIW, although there are no binary releases that include Python 3 yet, if you build from scratch with ./configure --with-python=3 you can use Sage with Python 3 and you'll find that the vast majority of stuff works (though with no promises).

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#83

When I was in college, about six or so years ago, I used Sage for my physics classes. At some point I stopped using it because it didn't really stand up to Mathematica, which we got for free. My professor said, funnily enough, "sage has been taken over by mathematicians!" talking about how it has a lot of support for math uses but not as much for things like solving ODEs that is more of use for physicists and enginee…

If I had the funding to do so, I would love to improve use of Sage for computational physics, particularly for particle physics and QFT. It would be great if Sage could serve easily as a full replacement for Mathematica in those areas, but currently lacks some library support.

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are waaaay outdated. "SageMathCloud is Now CoCalc" since May 2017. Go google it. And it's not free _at all_, except for very basic stuff. Your pricing depends on what you need, from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Not a criticism, only a heads up for the guys reading the comments.

wow, many times downvoted for redirecting people to an up to date situation so they can chose the plan best suited for they convenience. Gosh, HN is getting brutal. Btw, very nice job to the guys at CoCalc in general, as a collaboration tool, and specially at courses based on Jupyter Notebooks. EDIT: and now some guys going through my old posts in different threads giving me negative votes. Really?Wow.Just wow.

You don't have any other comments from the last 24 hours, so how are people supposed to be downvoting your old comments?

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You absolutely don't need a PhD to learn those things. True. You can learn anything without a PhD. A PhD requirement reduces the cost to hire qualified people. Instead of having to pay to interview 1000 people to get 5 you can interview 20. Companies recruit PhDs because they have amassed many techniques, and have modelling skills on average that are better than non-PhDs. There's also quite a difference between seei…

Wow that's so absolutely contradicted by my experience, I'm almost speechless. Having a degree does diddly-squat to the requirement to interview. It can even (famously) be counter-productive. The only good indicator of what somebody knows, is to ask them to demonstrate facility.

>The only good indicator of what somebody knows, is to ask them to demonstrate facility.

That's true. But not making the pool as concentrated as possible before asking them is a waste of limited resources.

Candidates cost money. When resources are limited, such as money to fly candidates out, time spent screening instead of building, time for senior people to work on interviews instead of getting billable work done, time to get a project done, then it is very valuable to winnow the search to places where there is a higher chance of finding a candidate.

So, one doesn't interview people randomly sampled from the entire populace for a reason. Sure you will get the best candidate, eventually, but the cost to do so is silly. Finding predictors that make your search smaller is extremely valuable.

Thus many jobs have educational requirements. Having hired probably 100ish people in my career, (as well as many friends of mine who have hired similarly), I can without a doubt tell you that demonstrated academic aptitude is a good predictor of overall candidate quality for these types of jobs.

>Having a degree does diddly-squat to the requirement to interview.

So you would claim for jobs using advanced math there is zero difference in mean skill among those with only a 6th grade education and those with a PhD?

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's so absolutely contradicted by my experience, I'm almost speechless. Having a degree does diddly-squat to the requirement to interview. It can even (famously) be counter-productive. The only good indicator of what somebody knows, is to ask them to demonstrate facility.

>The only good indicator of what somebody knows, is to ask them to demonstrate facility. That's true. But not making the pool as concentrated as possible before asking them is a waste of limited resources. Candidates cost money. When resources are limited, such as money to fly candidates out, time spent screening instead of building, time for senior people to work on interviews instead of getting billable work done,…

Pointless strawman. I'd take evidence of working successfully with math, regardless of degree. Choose your pool that way, instead of lazily reading only the first two lines of the resume.

Re: SageMath – Open-Source Mathematical Software System

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only good indicator of what somebody knows, is to ask them to demonstrate facility. That's true. But not making the pool as concentrated as possible before asking them is a waste of limited resources. Candidates cost money. When resources are limited, such as money to fly candidates out, time spent screening instead of building, time for senior people to work on interviews instead of getting billable work done,…

Pointless strawman. I'd take evidence of working successfully with math, regardless of degree. Choose your pool that way, instead of lazily reading only the first two lines of the resume.

>Pointless strawman.

How so? Do you think for some jobs without requiring a PhD they'd find the candidate they want without having to interview more people?

>I'd take evidence of working successfully with math, regardless of degree.

A PhD in math, especially from a good school, most certainly gives evidence of working successfully with math. It's easier to fake resume experience than to get a PhD, something that I've found quite common when interviewing people. And it's trivial to check someone actually got PhD - I've yet to find a candidate lie about that part.

I've probably interviewed a ~100 people over the years. I've found from experience that anything to reduce the pool quickly saves time and money, and I've still ended up with excellent candidates. Before learning how to weed quickly, I spent far more time and money on people that had very little ability to solve the problems we wanted solved.

Done much hiring?

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