> When reviewing GSOC applications (just speaking for myself - I am not > the only reviewer) I am most interested in ensuring that we can get > the best contributors who are capable of making the most valuable > contributions to important parts of SymPy. What you are proposing here > is a significant improvement to an important part of SymPy so the main > points to focus on in your application are: > 1) making it clear why this is important and how significant the improvement is > 2) demonstrating that you personally understand what needs doing and > are capable of doing the necessary work
Okay, thank you for the advice, Oscar! I'll make the proposal and post it here so that you and others can review it. Naveen On Monday, March 29, 2021 at 5:03:53 PM UTC+5:30 Oscar wrote: > On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 10:42, Naveen Saisreenivas Thota > <naveensai...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > I think you underestimate how much work is involved in really making > > > the implementation robust and complete. Note that it's much better to > > > have a well-tested, complete, efficient implementation of a single > > > algorithm with nicely organised and documented code than it is to have > > > multiple half-implemented algorithms. As Nijso emphasised earlier the > > > most important thing first is to establish a systematic test base. We > > > should get the Kamke examples in and you should verify that this does > > > find all the rational function solutions for all of the Ricatti ODEs. > > > > I was thinking as much, but I wanted to ask just to know your opinion as > well. I did test the current code with some examples, but I am yet to test > it with all of them. So, from what you say, I am planning to include > Rational Riccati Solver and ODE test bank (Kamke and Murphy) as the primary > items to be done and leave computation of rational solutions for a general > 1st order equation as a bonus? Will this be okay? > > Yes, I think that sounds good. > > Note, as I said in reply to some other queries about GSOC exactly what > you would or wouldn't achieve within the duration of the project is > less important than demonstrating that you are capable of making > significant contributions to SymPy. All tasks can turn out to be > harder or easier than expected so it's hard to estimate in advance > what is possible given a fixed timeframe. > > When reviewing GSOC applications (just speaking for myself - I am not > the only reviewer) I am most interested in ensuring that we can get > the best contributors who are capable of making the most valuable > contributions to important parts of SymPy. What you are proposing here > is a significant improvement to an important part of SymPy so the main > points to focus on in your application are: > 1) making it clear why this is important and how significant the > improvement is > 2) demonstrating that you personally understand what needs doing and > are capable of doing the necessary work > > Then if your application is successful and it turns out that (based on > the work you have already done) it is not hard to complete some of the > tasks listed then there is no shortage of other things to be done for > ODEs in SymPy. On the other hand if one of the tasks turns out to be > more involved than expected then it is better to limit the scope of > the project later and make sure that the parts that are implemented > are done well. > > A general point that I often make to students is that (usually) it is > better to do half a job well than to do the whole job badly. If half a > job is done well then it makes a good starting point for someone in > future to finish that work. If the whole job is done badly it > potentially makes it more difficult for someone else to improve that > work than it would be for them if starting from scratch. > > Oscar > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sympy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/e7601ddd-0916-455e-9015-a6df146c9fb2n%40googlegroups.com.
