41–50 of 97 posts
Is there any reason not to call Mathematica AI at this point? I swear some of the things it does look more like black magic than what we call AI nowadays...
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I've tried it for modeling tasks but I struggled with the sort of basic data manipulation that can be done within pandas/data.table. I can quite comfortably work with 100-million line CSVs using data.table on a standard laptop but Mathematica wasn't even able to ingest the file. I don’t disagree its technically very impressive but there's no point in having these amazing features if it stumbles with such basic tasks.
I've used Mathematica since about the year 2000, and I think Wolfram "missed the boat" of AI, big data, and machine learning. They were in the unique position of having one of the best symbolic differentiation engines and one of the best numeric engines and a Lisp-like REPL that allows one to write terse, elegant code. What they were always missing was efficient bulk data structures. In recent versions they've added…
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None of those can beat it in symbolic computation. You can write entire papers, by simply asking yourself the question: I wonder if this has an analytical integral? If you are lucky Mathematica spits out a solution in terms of a special function.
Why hasn't Wolfram automatically published all those papers? Or sell a paper-generating plugin?
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Even for string? Why not define a LinkedList constant?
Yes, in WL strings are commonly used in a matter similar to enums in other languages. The thing to keep in mind is that WL is based on symbolic replacement. You normally wouldn't define that kind of function as taking in a parameter (i.e., CreateDataStructure[x_] := ...), rather you'd define it for each case separately (i.e., CreateDataStructure["LinkedList"] := ...).
Kudos to the team for the great release. Two things I miss when working with Mathematica: refactor-rename variables and a usable object-oriented programming support. Refactor-rename is available via Eclipse-based IDE; however math typesetting is not available there (it makes a difference for large equations/expressions). There are a lot of community-developed approaches to OOP. I tried a number of these, sticking wit…
Probably too different to merge the submissions.
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Thanks for the link! The succinct article, "Open Source Mathematical Software", illustrates the issue with a quote from a Mathematica tutorial: > the internals of Mathematica are quite complicated, and even given a basic description of the algorithm used for a particular purpose, it is usually extremely difficult to reach a reliable conclusion about how the detailed implementation of this algorithm will actually beha…
Do note that's in the context of performance optimization. Even open source complicated code is still complicated code.
From the article calling for open-source mathematical software (my emphasis):
> ..we need a symbolic standard to make computer manipulations easier to document and verify.
> ..perhaps we should not be dependent on commercial software here. An open source project could..find better answers to the obvious problems such as availability, bugs, backward compatibility, platform independence, standard libraries, etc.
> Increasingly, proprietary software and the algorithms used are an essential part of mathematical proofs.
> ..with this situation two of the most basic rules of conduct in mathematics are violated: information is passed on free of charge and everything is laid open for checking.
If Mathematica were to be open-sourced one day, I suppose that would cover most of this wish list, with improved availability/reproducibility and verifiability. Tough to imagine without significant funding, collaboration, and communal agreement.
I have tried Mathematica for small duration and in general was wowed by it. For free CAS I would recommend to give Axiom or FriCAS(more actively developed) a run. http://fricas.sourceforge.net/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_(computer_algebra_system...
Now days, it's not often that I need to do heavy mathematical work, but I turn to Sage https://www.sagemath.org/ when I do. Sage has a notebook interface, is built on Python, and incorporates many free software math packages, like Maxima, into one system.
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A good piece to read about this was in the American Math Society Notices: https://www.ams.org/notices/200710/tx071001279p.pdf
Thanks for the link! The succinct article, "Open Source Mathematical Software", illustrates the issue with a quote from a Mathematica tutorial: > the internals of Mathematica are quite complicated, and even given a basic description of the algorithm used for a particular purpose, it is usually extremely difficult to reach a reliable conclusion about how the detailed implementation of this algorithm will actually beha…