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Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

writings.stephenwolfram.com

91–100 of 125 posts

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#91

I always compare the difference between Mathematica/Wolfram Language and Python to the difference between Classical Latin and English. I don't really like English from a linguistic point of view (as a non-native speaker). It's a hodgepodge of other languages and has so many exceptions, it's not very elegant. But it's so ubiquitous and useful that one basically has to know English today. On the other hand, Latin is be…

Almost all languages have exceptions and traditional grammars are just academic study of grammars.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#92
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense even for academia. Reproducibility is an issue and as we've seen with recent fraudulent claims in major publications - it's what is going to be used for verification of research. Many years back while in grad school I could not reproduce a result from a paper. Thankfully they had provided the data as public but not the code. I emailed the authors and got some matlab code back. My university didn…

True but also for a one of piracy exists just use a cracked copy of it and be done with it

Not practical in research. Doesn't solve the blackbox reproducibility problem. Also it makes the act of publishing a paper under your name practically a crime confession, as it's easy for companies to comb the literature to seek people publishing results obtained with software X without a license.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#93
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the most general-purpose one is SageMath, which is open-source and basically Python with a ton of sophisticated math stuff built into it. Everything I used to do in Mathematica I now do in sage, and I don't think I'm the only one. Probably field-dependent though. Of course there is a whole constellation of more specialized things in certain fields, that has come a long way in the last 15 years. So people nee…

Does SageMath use Sympy, or is there some other integrator built in? Last I heard Sympy was one of the worst performers, even among other open source CASs. https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_integration_tests/reports...

It used Maxima many years ago.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#94
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not call him a crank > And he writes about his work and himself in grandiose ways, usually comparing himself to Newton and Einstein ... Nothing major has come out of his research okay

The word ‘crank’ is a dismissive insult. Wolfram is definitely eccentric, probably hard to work with, but also undoubtedly smart. What good does it do to dismiss him? He’s doing nothing wrong spending his own money the way he wants to. And who knows something will come out of this. Similar to GP I’d like to see more of this.

> He’s doing nothing wrong spending his own money the way he wants to.

Except stealing credit for work done by his employees. Read about his lawsuit against Matthew Cook.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#95
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is well known, old news. I would not call him a crank, he's just an "independent physicist". He is a very successful and wealthy businessman thanks to Mathematica, with $100Ms of wealth presumably, and he choses to do physics in his own way, pursuing subjects that he finds interesting, in ways he finds interesting. And he writes about his work and himself in grandiose ways, usually comparing himself to Newton an…

> I would not call him a crank > And he writes about his work and himself in grandiose ways, usually comparing himself to Newton and Einstein ... Nothing major has come out of his research okay

Wolfram is definitely not a crank. Cranks do not understand scientific methods and also have a minimal understanding of whatever field they're trying to be active in. Like trying to push physics theories while demonstrably failing to understand high school level calculus. Cranks are also conspiracy theorists who inevitably believe knowledge like theirs is being suppressed.

Wolfram does display a similar ego to cranks. He tends to place his cellular automata at the same tier of importance as general relativity or wave-particle duality. But unlike cranks, he doesn't say that Einstein, Feynman and other greats are wrong, he doesn't "prove" his theories by math-looking babble that is definitely not math. He loves cellular automata and so much of what he writes is more like philosophy of science than science. He will model certain processes as an automaton and then he jumps from that to every natural process being a cellular automaton.

Eccentric, definitely, and most of his physics research isn't accepted but he's several orders above the level of crank.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#96
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to push back on that comparison. At least unlike Weinstein, Wolfram produced a genuinely impressive and useful piece of software, which empowers scientists and students worldwide. While his physics work is a little questionable and not too interesting, he doesn't seem to care too much what other people think. He'd never latch on to some podcast bro to give his ideas a wider reach. All Weinstein does is drop…

That's fair. What I was trying to get at is that Weinstein is also independently successful albeit in a completely unrelated field. There may be small parts of truth in his critique of the field but GU is just so completely batty and ignorant it's worth discounting his analysis here entirely. I find greater fault in the pushing of his "Intellectual Dark Web" pseudo-cult. So I would agree he's actually a contemptible…

> independently successful albeit in a completely unrelated field

what field?

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#97

I like the changes they’ve made to the backend in the AI era because now if you input “weight of 1 cup of sugar” into WolframAlpha it says 202 grams and if you put in “weight of 1 cup of sucrose” it says 376 grams. I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. - Harry Emerson Fosdick

The AI gave you as right a reasonable answer as could be made for the ambiguity of the questions, try asking why the answers are different when you thought they'd be the same (or check out a pre-AI answer https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/2fqyx...)

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#98
post #24

Hissab - https://hissab.io is a Free and opensource alternative to Wolfram

According to https://github.com/rawbytess/hissab , it's not even close to being an alternative to Wolfram. Hissab is described as "A strict, unit-aware natural-language calculator" and its syntax looks nothing like Wolfram. It reminds me of Wolfram Alpha, though.

Its not trying to achieve a feature parity with wolfram or mimic it. Its just an alternative to do calculations and may meet somewhere in the middle.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they still offer a free license on Raspberry Pi?

You can also emulate a Pi using QEMU to run Mathematica (slowly!) on other platforms, see e.g. https://www.thelinuxvault.net/blog/how-to-run-the-raspberry-...

on a Mac you should be able to emulate it pretty quickly since it's arm to arm

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense even for academia. Reproducibility is an issue and as we've seen with recent fraudulent claims in major publications - it's what is going to be used for verification of research. Many years back while in grad school I could not reproduce a result from a paper. Thankfully they had provided the data as public but not the code. I emailed the authors and got some matlab code back. My university didn…

The situation you’re describing is probably why Python is the defacto language of Machine Learning to this day.

I've noticed an increase in Rust, and I just googled it (for whatever that's worth) it seems to be #2 tied with C++ wont be surprised if it surpasses C++ and eventually gets tied with Python.
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