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The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

wstein.org

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Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#121

Post by niels_olson »

banach wrote: post #100
dcposch wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think nontraditional research organizations like YC Research and Google's Project Zero can solve this problem. -- Open source basic infrastructure -- everything from Sage to OpenSSL -- suffers from a market failure. We rely on these foundational projects for billions of dollars a year in commerce, but they often get minimal funding and are supported by semi-broke volunteers working in anonymity. * GPG is maintained…

These projects are a crucial part of the infrastructure of the modern information society. The solution to a lack of funding for these things is not charity from rich patrons, but governmental investment based on taxes.

I tend to disagree. The government incentives are aligned toward large long term investments, not individual DaVincis or Galileos

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#122

Post by arca_vorago »

chestervonwinch wrote: post #113
arca_vorago wrote: post #111

I'm not a math guy, but I am a GNU guy who wants to learn more, and I'm curious what all the math geeks think about GNU Octave? How does it compare to matlab and mathematica? Any quitks or catches that make it unusuable for certain situations? Stuff like that...

Octave is nice, and it compares well with matlab in my experience. However, I haven't used it in quite some time, as I switched from octave+gnuplot to the scientific python stack some years ago (and I prefer it immensely).

I've heard quite a bit of preference for the python stack, any reasons that come to mind? Is it just the usability of the language or what?

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#124

Post by CamperBob2 »

algeom wrote: post #97
cs702 wrote: post #57

It's SHAMEFUL that academics like Stein who dedicate their lives to developing amazing open-source software do not get funding and frequently fail to get tenure. These individuals truly are making the world better!

Most academics do not get funding or tenure. Most funded academic mathematicians lose funding at some point. The funding rate for NSF grants in mathematics is certainly less than 33%, and one can only submit a standard proposal once per year. The competition is FIERCE. (I've been on panels: it is terrifying to see who doesn't get funded.) Ask any mathematician -- theorem prover or software writer -- about excellent p…

Mathematicians who write software are no more likely to be "truly making the world better" than those who prove theorems and teach hundreds or thousands of students every year.

How can this be true in the case of a mathematician who writes something that many/most of the others use?

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#125

Post by travisoliphant »

arca_vorago wrote: post #122
chestervonwinch wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Octave is nice, and it compares well with matlab in my experience. However, I haven't used it in quite some time, as I switched from octave+gnuplot to the scientific python stack some years ago (and I prefer it immensely).

I've heard quite a bit of preference for the python stack, any reasons that come to mind? Is it just the usability of the language or what?

Everyone has their own story around this. For me, the reason I did not go with Octave when I chose to migrate from Matlab to Python was that I wanted to be part of a general-purpose language community. Octave had the nice advantage of being very close to the Matlab syntax --- which has some nice properties (e.g. easier matrix-math expressions and matrix-building expressions)

However, I felt there would be more innovation around the programming language itself (think decorators, generators, futures, compilers, and coroutines). The boundary region between "applied-math-programming" and general purpose computing requires a lot of sometimes tedious work. Having a general purpose computing language would mean that more people would be available for that work.

Even now, one of the principal challenges of NumPy which is the foundation of the Python scientific stack is that it combines applied math (fft, linear algebra, polynomials) with computer-science (type systems, data-structures, and multiple-dispatch functionals). Maintaining all of that with one group of people is difficult.

If we could re-factor the NumPy code base into 1) a data-declaration type system --- i.e. look at datashape.pydata.org which is a generalization of dtype, 2) a multiple-dispatch generic function system (the ufuncs) and then 3) a container object. These could all be maintained by separate groups (and even #1 and #2 could be pulled into the Python language itself). See the libdynd project for a reference example of what it could look like.

Then NumPy could be maintained as a set of math libraries on top of that.

Then, it would be relatively straightforward to build the octave DSL on top of the Python computing stack and we would be able to share work.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#126

Post by nikofeyn »

ddumas wrote: post #58

I'm glad William included slide 10 calling attention to the hostile and insulting attitude Wolfram Research has toward mathematicians and reproducible science in general. (I think some of Sage Math Inc's other closed-course competitors likely have similar attitudes, but Wolfram Research seems to be the worst.) "You should realize at the outset that while knowing about the internals of Mathematica may be of intellectu…

you can do such a thing with matlab. many, many of the function calls and algorithms in matlab can be directly viewed.

and honestly, it seems like diving into sage may not be as trivial as you make it sound. is it not a massive glue of many different languages and implementations?

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#127

Post by tmptmp »

niels_olson wrote: post #119
douche wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems trivially obvious that a better use of funds at many universities would be paying for actual academic research at a few hundred K per year, vs a big-name football coach, with all the associated staff, assistants, equipment, etc, for tens of millions per year.

Except the ROI on the football program is obvious and huge compared to literally any department at the university.

Since when it has become acceptable that the goal of academic institute is/should be dirty ROI? And then why just football? Start funding cabaret, rave parties and poll-dance events as they surely will have more ROI.

Sports has been the undoing of US education in schools [1] earlier and now it seems even in higher ed. The sooner they get rid of sports from educational institutes the better for them.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case...

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#129

Post by MichaelBurge »

niels_olson wrote: post #119
douche wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems trivially obvious that a better use of funds at many universities would be paying for actual academic research at a few hundred K per year, vs a big-name football coach, with all the associated staff, assistants, equipment, etc, for tens of millions per year.

Except the ROI on the football program is obvious and huge compared to literally any department at the university.

By definition of positive ROI, the university has more money than before, which in particular means it can spend more money on research by building football stadia.

On the wider scale, extracurriculars only affect[2] share-of-students rather than increase the total number of students[1], so such programs have a globally negative ROI. But each individual university is making a rational decision.

[1] I'm assuming there's a negligible percentage of students that would avoid college entirely if no or very few colleges had football programs. It's safe to ignore football scholarships, because you still have the option of giving the students free money, which is cheaper than giving them free money and also running a football program.

[2] I'm also assuming the football program itself doesn't generate enough revenue to offset its costs, and only affects enrollment. I honestly don't know if they make enough money in tickets and trinkets to offset the debt service for a stadium, salaries for coaches, free tuition for students, etc. If the ROI is positive(or even negative, but with a positive cap rate), then it might be rational economically to continue them.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#130

Post by williamstein »

porFavor wrote: post #117
williamstein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have come to the same conclusion, despite a decade of wishful thinking in the opposite direction. That said, companies can do a much, much better job of working together with academia, and I hope SageMath, Inc. does.

Nooooooooooooooooooo! I mean, yes. But, also no. Prof. Stein, You do not know me, but you have been an inpiration to me. I came across several of your books during a year of post-bac study. They spoke to me, especially "Algebraic Number Theory, a Computational Approach". They also steered me toward your home page, and your work on Sage Math. I thought to myself, "yes. yes!" Though I'm not punk as fuck, I'm definitely…

Thank you for your comment, which I've carefully read. Feel free to email me at wstein@gmail.com, though I can't guarantee I'll have much time to answer, since I'm pretty busy. Indeed, one must constantly guard against the many intrinsic evils of corporations.
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