On August 22, 2006 9:18 PM Gaby wrote: > > Bill Page writes: > > [...] > > | Gaby would like to introduce his students to "symbolic > | computation", but really Axiom (and Aldor) are not very > | good at this -- by design. > > The appearance of AXIOM in the scientific market moves symbolic > computations into a higher plane, where scientists can formulate > their statements in their own language and receive computer > assistance in their proofs. [...] AXIOM provides a powerful > scientific environment for easy construction of mathematical > tools and algorithms; it is a symbolic manipulation system, > and a high performance numerical system, with full graphic > capabilities. > > -- Gregory V. Chudnovsky in the Foreword of > AXIOM, the Scientific Computation System > > > I suspect the authors of the book forgot to tell him that the > designers of AXIOM, by design, really did make it "not very good > at symbolic computation". >
Chudnovsky was not making the distinction between "symbolic computation" and "computer algebra" that Steven Watt is making in the papers that I cited previously. Perhaps Gaby, you were also was using "symbolic" in this more general sense? Still I believe that Steven's distinction is relevant and worth making when comparing Axiom to it's alternatives. The Chudnovsky brothers are certainly prolific and well known mathematicians - particularly when it comes to computing pi to high precision. I think it was great that Axiom received such an endorsement from them. Gregory Chudnovsky was a contemporary of Richard Jenks, one of the original developers of Axiom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Chudnovsky http://www.poly.edu/faculty/chudnowskygregory/index.php http://www.math.poly.edu/research/gchudnovsky_publications.phtml But one should keep in mind that in spite of a very considerable investment by Numerical Algorithms Group in a completely new user interface (based on Techexplorer) and extensive work on integration of Axiom with the NAG numerical libraries, Axiom was a commercial failure when placed in direct competition with Mathematica and Maple from 1991 - 2001. The quote from Chudnovsky above and in fact the entire Axiom book from 1992 was clearly part of the marketing strategy for Axiom at that time. I wonder what Dr. Chudnovsky would write today if asked to compare the Axiom open source project to other open source projects and the commercial counterparts? Regards, Bill Page. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
