Rob Beezer wrote: > On Sep 17, 8:00 am, Nathann Cohen <nathann.co...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Could it be good for sage to.... I do not know, perhaps become some kind of >> library of published algorithms ? Should we be thinking about ways to let >> used find "the algorithm described in paper XXX for journal XXX number XX >> pages XX-XX" ? > > More than just a library of implementations of algorithms, I like the > idea of Sage as a repository of mathematical knowledge. For example, > docstrings can contain citations to articles or monographs. Sometimes > doctests can be based on theorems - create some object randomly, then > test if two seemingly unrelated computations are equal, as guaranteed > according to a theorem. Having two algorithms implemented for > something, and then a discussion of cases when one is superior, or > even hard-coding the choice is another piece of knowledge embedded in > Sage. Having docstrings close to the code, being open source, and > making docstrings and source code so easy to access, makes it easy to > explain, accumulate and organize a wealth of mathematical knowledge as > a side-effect, and I think this is another big advantage to an open > source approach to this class of software. > > I know I've learned lots of mathematics that is new to me since > becoming involved, and in my contributions I've tried when possible to > reflect the above philosophy.
I should add that Tim Daly takes this a step further and has all of the Axiom documentation actually be books about mathematics, a "true" repository of information, in volume form. Jason -- Jason Grout --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
