>> Since the stated goal of Sage is to be a viable alternative to >> the 4Ms it makes sense to develop a "measure" of how close the >> goal is approached. >[specifc test suites] >> This is where Sage gets to prove it really is a 4Ms alternative. > >The goal of Sage is to be an alternative to the 4M's in the sense that >it is a viable alternative for *real people* to do what they need to do on >a day to day basis for their research, teaching, and education. This is >best measured by *listening* to real people describe how they >use math software, and specifically what they they really find >lacking in Sage. Pursuing a grand program involving large test >suites is of course very valuable, but it is a much different than >the main goal of the Sage project, and it somewhat ignores the >dynamic nature of real people and their needs. > >The mission of the Sage project -- to provide a viable free open >source alternative for every real people to Magma, Maple, >Mathematica, and Matlab -- is not going to change until it >is accomplished.
I believe you sidestepped the question. My point is that Sage makes the claim that it will be a viable alternative to the 4Ms. In computational mathematics that is a testable claim. So test it. Or is your claim that *real people* do not care that Sage provides correct and tested answers to ODEs, integration, limits, etc? Clearly the 4Ms have shown what they can do. Maple's Kamke test suite answers give me great confidence that (a) Maple can handle my ODE needs, (b) they give correct answers, (c) they have a much wider range than Axiom and (d) Axiom gets the right answers for the subset it accepts. I now know that Axiom needs more extensive ODE algorithms. If you do ODE work I'd highly recommend Maple over Axiom, at least until Axiom can prove it is competitiive in ODEs. It is not a lot of effort. The Kamke test suite took a couple weeks to test. The Bonderenko suite took about 2 months. The Schaum test suite took about 2 months (but I had to develop it from scratch). These are summer tasks for students. They are all in Axiom syntax but some bright spot could write an Axiom-to-Sage translator and have the tests running quickly. I would offer to do it for Sage but I'm busy building a new test suite for graphics based on the CRC Standard for Curves and Surfaces. You're welcome to use the test suite when it is complete. The results would go far toward convincing *real people* who care about the quality of their computational mathematics software (e.g. me) that Sage "meets or exceeds" the 4Ms in fundamental areas. Without some sort of objective measurement (which we ought to expect from computational mathematicians) the "viable alternative" claim is just marketing hype. Since I'm confident that Sage is capable of "meets or exceeds" I think it would benefit the community to test it. Tim An occasional "real people", although I have my complex moments. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
