---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter G. Doyle @gauss.dartmouth
Date: Sep 17, 2007 11:59 AM
Subject: Calculus
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dear William Stein,
I have recently discovered SAGE, which I think is really quite amazing.
I am contemplating introducing the students in our honors calculus course
here at Dartmouth to SAGE. I'm a bit leery about this, since I'm new to SAGE
myself. I'm wondering if you can suggest materials (e.g. sample worksheets)
I could crib from.
Some observations about SAGE.
-- It would be great to have a short, simple description of
how to save and retrieve worksheets. And maybe there could be an
`Open Worksheet' option on the file menu, right below `New Worksheet',
where it usually comes. It took be the longest time to find the `Home' button!
-- It's still far from clear to me what `downloading' and `uploading' are
supposed to mean.
-- When I install an updated version of SAGE, my old worksheets aren't
available. I've been finding them, opening them with a text editor, and
copying the text into a new worksheet. I bet there is a better way.
-- I think that the Python convention of not including the upper bound
in a sum is a real problem.
sage: sum(i for i in range(1,10))
45
I understand this is a fundamental convention in Python, and that it is very
natural for people used to malloc(), but I worry that this will be a constant
headache for students (and professors!). SAGE understands that I want to
include the upper limit when I ask for a taylor series:
sage: taylor(exp(x),x,0,3)
1 + x + x^2/2 + x^3/6
But in a sum it pretends not to understand what I mean. I guess I could
define `myrange' to include the upper bound. But I think it would be better
if you could come up with a nice, clean way to protect users from
this aspect of Python, as you have protected us from other aspects
(like ^, /, long integers).
-- Speaking of long integers, I think this is probably a bug:
sage: sum(i for i in xrange(10^6))
499999500000L
-- The response to `latex?' seems to be out of date.
%latex
The equation y^2 = x^3 + x defines an elliptic curve.
We have 2006 = SAGE{factor(2006)}.
I thought it was a great credit to SAGE that when I edited the sample input
in what seemed the obvious way, enclosing the math in $$ and changing SAGE
to \sage, that it worked as expected.
-- Regarding latex, it would be great to have a simple description of
how to use the notebook interface to produce a paper in latex incorporating
sage input and output,
-- I haven't yet figured out how to run consistency tests (making sure
that examples have the correct output) within a sage notebook.
Cheers,
Peter Doyle
--
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org
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