Thanks very much for this. Very interesting to discuss with the students even if the mathematics is way beyond high school. I think it's important for them to get at least a little picture of the kind of stuff that's actually going on these days. Coming from our secondary curriculum, it's easy for students to develop the opinion that math is a dead subject where everything is already known. They never hear of anything new happening, unless a new prime number gets discovered. Hopefully this gives them some sense that math is actually quite alive these days and that through Sage they're connected to it.
- Michel On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Thierry Dumont <[email protected] > wrote: > > You can read the following paper about the history of E8 representation > computation: > http://atlas.math.umd.edu/kle8.narrative.html > A large part of the software was written by my late colleague Fokko > DuCloux: > http://www.aimath.org/E8/ducloux.html > The entry for the software his here: > http://www.liegroups.org/ > > The code by DuCloux his pure C++ (very beautiful programing !), and took a > huge amount of coding time to him. For E8, the problem was to find a > computer with enough memory (about 100 GB), evenf is (read the references) > it was possible to divide the complexity by 2. The term supercomputer is a > bit misused: this is a classical computer, with a large amount of memory. > The code is not parallelized. The Sage group owned such a computer at these > times. > > t.d. > > Le 23/01/2011 05:56, David Joyner a écrit : > > On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 10:12 PM, michel paul<[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> In The Geometry of Everything there was the mention of E8. In the E8 >>> description, in the section called The E8 Calculation, there is a line: >>> >>> "In the end the calculation took about 77 hours on the supercomputer >>>> Sage. >>>> " >>>> >>> >>> I was really curious that there was a 'supercomputer' called 'Sage', and >>> when I clicked the link, well, you get the Sage homepage! >>> >>> So, I was wondering, is it true that Sage was used in mapping E8? Or is >>> >> >> >> True. For example, see some of the articles linked near the bottom >> of the wiki page http://wiki.sagemath.org/SAGE_in_the_News >> >> >> there a mistake somewhere? >>> >>> I want to be able to accurately state this to my classes (and the math >>> department). In making the case for the importance of a computational >>> theme >>> in the current math curriculum, I think this could be cool. No one's >>> individual mind can contain E8. The mathematical objects being studied >>> these days are too complex to be contained in a merely human mind. We >>> need >>> the computer to be able to perceive these kinds of objects. The computer >>> in >>> math these days is like the telescope in astronomy or the microscope in >>> biology. >>> >>> Thanks, >>> >>> Michel >>> >>> -- >>> "Computer science is the new mathematics." >>> >>> -- Dr. Christos Papadimitriou >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "sage-edu" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> [email protected]<sage-edu%[email protected]> >>> . >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en. >>> >>> >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-edu" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<sage-edu%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en. > > -- "Computer science is the new mathematics." -- Dr. Christos Papadimitriou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. 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-edu?hl=en.
