POLL-3 -> POLL-3.1

I kindly ask those who voted on POLL-3 to vote again. I had to delete and then add the poll again because a running POLL can't be modified in Blogger. Why the change? I forgot two rather important, open source, programs: SAGE and GAP. SAGE uses GAP as its Group Theory kernel. I have experimented a lot with GAP in the past. Currently I am still in a Mathematica phase. There are many other excellent programs around but I think that the list is fairly complete for what one might use when preparing a TMA.

Sage or Mathematica ?

Sage and Mathematica are both very powerful mathematics tools. For an absolute beginner both packages will do, I suppose.

Mathematica is closed source and for the price of a full edition Mathematica package you can also buy a state-of-the-art Sony VAIO or other sexy netbook or tablet you are thinking of buying. The Mathematica programming language is a so called propriety language. That means that it is only used in Mathematica and the owners of Mathematica can change the language whenever they want. Mathematica has a steep learning curve. Now that I master the basics of it I am very satisfied with what Mathematica can do for me.

Because Sage says it is possible to integrate Mathematica into Sage ( haven't figured yet out how, I suppose I need the Mathematica for Linux version ) I am having another look at Sage. Sage is Linux only but you can run it entirely from within a browser. So you can install Sage on a Linux server ( for example in a VMWare virtual machine ) and run it on Windows in your browser.

( More later about my Sage findings. )

http://www.sagemath.org/

SAGE

I downloaded and watched a colloquium on SAGE by William Stein. Stein talks about the past, present and future of SAGE. He is very much in favor of open source software but couldn't find the perfect open source math program so he decided to write one himself. His plan was to reverse-engineer existing open source code and port it to a new Python program. He soon realized it would take several lifetimes to implement so he used existing software as a sort of library behind GAPE. ( ... )

He briefly mentioned none of the open source programs are in any way multi-threaded. I suppose that's both a technical and mathematical challenge. Interesting...

Beware of ignorance ( or: just discovered SAGE )

Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Ignorance is also the state of being ignorant or uninformed.

Until today I never heard of SAGE. ( ... )

What's so special about SAGE? From the website:

Use SAGE for studying a huge range of mathematics, including algebra, calculus, elementary to very advanced number theory, cryptography, numerical computation, commutative algebra, group theory, combinatorics, graph theory, and exact linear algebra.

SAGE makes it easy for you to use most mathematics software together. SAGE includes interfaces to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB, and MuPAD, and the free programs Axiom, GAP, GP/PARI, Macaulay2, Maxima, Octave, and Singular.

You work with SAGE using the highly regarded scripting language Python instead of an obscure language designed for a particular mathematics program. You can write programs that combine serious mathematics with anything else.

Use SAGE from your web browser, which connects either to a program running on your computer, or a program running elsewhere. With the SAGE notebook you can create embedded graphics, beautifully typeset mathematical expressions, add and delete input, and start up and interrupt multiple calculations.

Introduction to SAGE (pdf)