Harald Schilly wrote: > Also, there will always be a gap between a commercial closed source > system and Sage due to it's nature of development, the attitude of the > community and the circumstances how development works. All these > factors contribute how the final product actually manifests! > I think this should be emphasized in some way, that this is something > "positive". Enabling the consumer to give feedback, actually > contribute to the product in many ways (documentation+online > tutorials, sharing knowledge [peer to peer help], code, ...) and > probably following the development process very closely.
At many undergrad-only institutions in the US, giving capable students a "research experience" is a big, big priority. When I have supervised these, I have often tried to make some computing part of the project, since it gives the students something additional that is more tangible to work with than trying to develop and write proofs all day long (something they don't typically have the stamina for). So with Sage's open development process this makes an ideal component for such a project. Much of the mathematical infrastructure is there already (ie symbolics, factoring, linear algebra, Python, R, etc, etc, etc) so a student can build onto the basics from the start. And the software they produce can be folded back into Sage, or maybe a contribution to Sage might be the whole focus of such a project. William has involved many UW undergrads with Sage development and I am sure there are others. But I am thinking more of examples like David Perkinson's sandpile package, which I believe is part of a student's senior thesis project at Reed College. And I think Jason Grout (and/or somebody he works with) is using Sage as part of an NSF-REU project this summer. If there were more examples like this, it might demonstrate the value of Sage to a portion of the undergraduate-teaching market, and one or two might be something to highlight in Sun's marketing. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
