Re: Flooved

[Dima Pasechnik]

On 2013-09-02, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> Explain it to your spouse/children
> why you are so busy that you can't go to the little-league game,
> can't save for college, and
> your family cell phone plan doesn't have unlimited data :)
There is no end to this line of thought, as we all know - e.g. how about
a stretch limo with a driver, a butler,
a private island and a private jet, a yacht with a crew, etc...


> your family cell phone plan doesn't have unlimited data :)
in my case, it's by choice. No TV at home, either...

>
> RJF
>
>
>

[rjf]

I think that a mathematician

On Monday, September 2, 2013 11:03:35 PM UTC-7, Dima Pasechnik wrote:

On 2013-09-02, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>   Explain it to your spouse/children
> why you are so busy that you can't go to the little-league game,
> can't save for college, and
> your family cell phone plan doesn't have unlimited data :)
There is no end to this line of thought, as we all know - e.g. how about
a stretch limo with a driver, a butler,
a private island and a private jet, a yacht with a crew, etc...

There is the other direction of that line of thought, too.  
Perhaps you would propose that it's really just fine -- or
maybe supremely moral -- to pursue your mathematical
dreams in total disregard of material possessions.  Say,
beg on the streets.

Come to think of it, I have encountered at least 2 such
people (allegedly with Berkeley math PhDs) begging
on the streets of Berkeley.  But they had kind of blown
out their minds with drugs, so the story goes.

Anyway, there is a balance.  I don't covet a stretch limo
or a jet.  But it would be a shame if you
(or anyone, for that matter) and
his/her family had real financial woes that affected,say,
the ability of children to go to a suitable school,  or that
affected retirement.

> your family cell phone plan doesn't have unlimited data :)

 

in my case, it's by choice. No TV at home, either...

That's fine with me.  Personally I have a TV and a cell phone,
and internet too.
RJF

>
> RJF
>
>
>

[William Stein]

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:40 AM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I'm puzzled by the choice of technology here. TeX is not an unambiguous
> language
> for mathematics. I dislike the verbosity of MathML, but it seems to at
> least address
> the surface-syntax issue (while likely botching semantics). It is not
> clear what Sage
> is exactly offering -- is it a lingua franca for a (subset of?) interchange
> of its
> components? Is MathML under the covers? If not, what?
>
> What happened to MathJax?

Which of the following programs/languages have you (rjf) actually
*used* (not just read about, but actually written and run at least one
line of code/markup with):

[ ] TeX
[ ] MathML
[ ] Sage
[ ] MathJax

>
> (As an example, it is possible to represent x+1 in Maxima in at least 3
> ways. Presumably
> there are a bunch of other ways in other systems.)
>
> Regarding the development of courseware programs to support the
> teaching/learning/testing
> of subjects requiring the I/O of mathematics: this seems like a good idea
> from the
> teacher's side, and allows for the writing and funding of grants.
> It is far less clear how it works from the student perspective. Realize
> that to some students
> the effort to interact with a computer, especially type math on a keyboard,
> is strictly an
> additional burden. Most students just want to get a passing grade and
> forget their math.
>
> But not all, and it is presumably a benefit to society to encode math
> knowledge as well as
> the teaching of math and math-using subjects in durable, low-cost,
> distributable computer
> form.
> RJF
> RJF
>
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--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[Richard Fateman]

Is this answer-a-question-with-a-multiple-choice-question-week? I can
play this game.

On 9/5/2013 12:56 PM, William Stein wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:40 AM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm puzzled by the choice of technology here. TeX is not an unambiguous
>> language
>> for mathematics. I dislike the verbosity of MathML, but it seems to at
>> least address
>> the surface-syntax issue (while likely botching semantics). It is not
>> clear what Sage
>> is exactly offering -- is it a lingua franca for a (subset of?) interchange
>> of its
>> components? Is MathML under the covers? If not, what?
>>
>> What happened to MathJax?
> Which of the following programs/languages have you (rjf) actually
> *used* (not just read about, but actually written and run at least one
> line of code/markup with):
>
> [ ] TeX
> [ ] MathML
> [ ] Sage
> [ ] MathJax

OK, here's a set of questions for you. Which of the following
programs/languages have you (WS, not through some proxy student etc)
read about, used, contributed to the standard, contributed ideas or code
to an implementation, taught in class. Appropriate responses: R, U,
C, I, T


[ ] OpenMath
[ ] Axiom or Fricas
[ ] Maple
[ ] Mathematica
[ ] Reduce
[ ] Macsyma, especially including the commercial front end
[ ] wxMaxima
[ ] Maxima CRE form
[ ] Maxima Taylor series form
[ ] Maxima Poisson series form
[ ] MathCAD
[ ] Matlab
[ ] Assembly language (e.g. Intel 486)
[ ] visual BASIC
[ ] Excel
[ ] MS equation editor
[ ] MPFR
[ ] Java
[ ] Javascript / ECMAscript
[ ] Ruby
[ ] ANSI Common Lisp with declaration of types and compiling
[ ] CLOS (common lisp object system)
[ ] GNUplot
[ ] FORTRAN 77
[ ] Fortran 2008
[ ] NQTHM (Boyer Moore theorem prover)
[ ] Coq
[ ] C language numerics
[ ] LAPACK


I see where you are going, but by analogy, you would only trust movie
reviews from people who were directors?. ... music reviews by
composers? ... legal interpretations by um criminals :)

[William Stein]

Which of the following skateboard tricks can you do?

[ ] backside kickturn
[ ] ollie
[ ] frontside stalefish
...

[Ondřej Čertík]

How many pull ups can you do?

[ ] 0
[ ] 1-5
[ ] 5-10
[ ] 11
[ ] 12
[ ] More



> ...
>
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[William Stein]

RJF says:
> Wow, this is much more fun than baiting Tom.
...

How many (natural) languages can you
[ x] read
[ x] speak
[ x] write


How many figures can you construct via Origami? [x]

How many pounds can you bench press
[ x] ?

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Wow, this is much more fun than baiting Tom.
>
> How many (natural) languages can you
> [ ] read
> [ ] speak
> [ ] write
>
>
> How many figures can you construct via Origami? [ ]
>
> How many pounds can you bench press
> [ ] ?

[Dima Pasechnik]

On 2013-09-05, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I'm puzzled by the choice of technology here. TeX is not an unambiguous
> language
> for mathematics. I dislike the verbosity of MathML, but it seems to at
> least address
> the surface-syntax issue (while likely botching semantics). It is not
> clear what Sage
> is exactly offering -- is it a lingua franca for a (subset of?)
> interchange of its
> components? Is MathML under the covers? If not, what?
>
> What happened to MathJax?

What is your favourite cannabis strain:

[ ] White Widow
[ ] Superskunk
[ ] Thai
[ ] Northern Lights
[ ] Nederwiet

[Tom Boothby]

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 8:21 PM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:

> What is your favourite cannabis strain:
>
> [ ] White Widow
> [ ] Superskunk
> [ ] Thai
> [ ] Northern Lights
> [ ] Nederwiet
>

I'm pretty sure I already established that RJF consumes crack. And
the good stuff, too.

[ ] EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE WITHIN SINGLE
[ ] ROTATION. 4 CORNER DAYS PROVES 1 DAY 1 GOD IS TAUGHT EVIL. IGNORANCE
[ ] OF TIMECUBE4 SIMPLE MATH IS RETARDATION AND EVIL EDUCATION DAMNATION.
[ ] CUBELESS AMERICANS DESERVE - AND SHALL BE EXTERMINATED. I am a Knower
[ ] of 4 corner simultaneous 24 hour Days that occur within a single 4
[ ] corner rotation of Earth. Until you can tear and burn the bible to
[ ] escape the EVIL ONE, it will be impossible for your educated stupid
[ ] brain to know that 4 different corner harmonic 24 hour Days rotate
[ ] simultaneously within a single 4 quadrant rotation of a squared
[ ] equator and cubed Earth. The Solar system, the Universe, the Earth and
[ ] all humans are composed of + 0 - antipodes, and equal to nothing if
[ ] added as a ONE or Entity. All Creation occurs between Opposites.
[ ] Academic ONEism destroys +0- brain. If you would acknowledge simple
[ ] existing math proof that 4 harmonic corner days rotate simultaneously
[ ] around squared equator and cubed Earth, proving 4 Days, Not
[ ] 1Day,1Self,1Earth or 1God that exists only as anti-side. This page you
[ ] see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- antipodes.
[ ] Add +0- as One = nothing. Seek Awesome Lectures, MY WISDOM DEBUNKS
[ ] GODS OF ALL RELIGIONS AND ACADEMIA.

[Richard Fateman]

Sad to say,
this is too boring. Perhaps I should post a joke.

Q.How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A.One, he gives it to 6 Californians thereby reducing the problem to an
earlier joke.


You can google for more... e.g. search for "a mathematician walks into a
bar"
RJF

[Ondřej Čertík]

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 5:24 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> RJF says:
>> Wow, this is much more fun than baiting Tom.
> ...
>
> How many (natural) languages can you
> [ x] read
> [ x] speak
> [ x] write
>
>
> How many figures can you construct via Origami? [x]
>
> How many pounds can you bench press
> [ x] ?

You got me curious (last time I did bench press was when I was 18 and
I just turned 30 today), so I lifted 185 lb at the gym today. Is that
a good number?
I think one should be able to lift its own weight and I weigh 210 lb, so I still
need to improve I guess.

Ondrej

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[Bill Hart]

The most I ever bench pressed was 275 lbs. but that's not even remotely impressive. I have a friend who has done 330 lbs.

I have managed to deadlift 490 lbs though.

Do I win?

I can't do any of those funky skateboard tricks. But I can do some martial arts tricks. Ha ha, I've got you there haven't I!!

Bill.

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/6/2013 4:31 AM, Bill Hart wrote:
> The most I ever bench pressed was 275 lbs. but that's not even
> remotely impressive. I have a friend who has done 330 lbs.
>
> I have managed to deadlift 490 lbs though.
>
> Do I win?

Maybe. But if the game is to continue asking questions without
answering them, you've lost.
You answered a question.
And now that I've answered yours, I've lost too.

So William and Dima are still in the game, and they can ask each other
questions until one
of them get tired or answers one.

And Tom can do what he does best, which seems to be to soil his own
Google searches.

RJF

[Tom Boothby]

I don't know, Bill. If we're comparing apples and oranges, I've leg
pressed a half ton.

Share your martial arts tricks! I've broken two flaming boards with
my forehead!

[Bill Hart]

How much is half a ton in pounds? I've leg pressed 970 lbs.

For martial arts tricks I can do a 360, 360 gyro, 540, crescent 540, 720, 1080, front flip, side flip, feilong, tricker's aerial, b-kick, cheat 720. In the past I've also done back flip, aerial, btwist, double btwist, cork, cheat 900. You'll have to look those up cause I aint 'splainin'.

You can see videos of all the tricks here:

http://www.club540.com/tricktionary

As you can see, I'm considered a beginner after 8 year of practice.

Bill.

[William Stein]

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Bill Hart <goodwi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> How much is half a ton in pounds? I've leg pressed 970 lbs.
>
> For martial arts tricks I can do a 360, 360 gyro, 540, crescent 540, 720,
> 1080, front flip, side flip, feilong, tricker's aerial, b-kick, cheat 720.
> In the past I've also done back flip, aerial, btwist, double btwist, cork,
> cheat 900. You'll have to look those up cause I aint 'splainin'.
>
> You can see videos of all the tricks here:
>
> http://www.club540.com/tricktionary
>
> As you can see, I'm considered a beginner after 8 year of practice.
>
> Bill.

I'm still a beginner as well...

Me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho4DdC06JeY

This 14-year old I skate with regularly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJmmoQosG50

[Bill Hart]

14 year olds suck. They can do everything I want to do, and they learn everything in 5 minutes. I'm actually losing tricks, not learning new ones!

Bill.

[Ondřej Čertík]

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 5:31 AM, Bill Hart <goodwi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> The most I ever bench pressed was 275 lbs. but that's not even remotely
> impressive. I have a friend who has done 330 lbs.
>
> I have managed to deadlift 490 lbs though.
>
> Do I win?

Nice. You win over me. Do you specially train for bench press or can
you lift 275 lbs
any day?

Ondrej

[Bill Hart]

Oh no, I only did that once, and I train regularly.

Probably any day I can lift 242lbs, and I go through phases where I can lift 264lbs regularly. The 275 is a personal best.

Bill.

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/6/2013 8:04 AM, Tom Boothby wrote:
> I've broken two flaming boards with
> my forehead!
>
>

'splains a lot.

[Tom Boothby]

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Bill Hart <goodwi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> How much is half a ton in pounds? I've leg pressed 970 lbs.

I've got 30 lbs on ya. I'd have more, but the machine was maxed out.
That was the only time I've lifted in a gym... but I was doing a lot
of cycling those days.

> For martial arts tricks I can do a 360, 360 gyro, 540, crescent 540, 720,
> 1080, front flip, side flip, feilong, tricker's aerial, b-kick, cheat 720.
> In the past I've also done back flip, aerial, btwist, double btwist, cork,
> cheat 900. You'll have to look those up cause I aint 'splainin'.

Wow, that looks fun... but does anybody actually use these in fights?

> As you can see, I'm considered a beginner after 8 year of practice.

That's true of almost anything worth doing.

[Ondřej Čertík]

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Tom Boothby <tomas....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Bill Hart <goodwi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> How much is half a ton in pounds? I've leg pressed 970 lbs.
>
> I've got 30 lbs on ya. I'd have more, but the machine was maxed out.
> That was the only time I've lifted in a gym... but I was doing a lot
> of cycling those days.

I don't do leg presses, as my knees start feeling weird when I put in
couple hundred pounds, yet the weight is too light for my legs
to get any kind of workout. So I prefer cycling.

O.

>
>> For martial arts tricks I can do a 360, 360 gyro, 540, crescent 540, 720,
>> 1080, front flip, side flip, feilong, tricker's aerial, b-kick, cheat 720.
>> In the past I've also done back flip, aerial, btwist, double btwist, cork,
>> cheat 900. You'll have to look those up cause I aint 'splainin'.
>
> Wow, that looks fun... but does anybody actually use these in fights?
>
>> As you can see, I'm considered a beginner after 8 year of practice.
>
> That's true of almost anything worth doing.
>

[Bill Hart]

On 6 September 2013 17:51, Tom Boothby <tomas....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Bill Hart <goodwi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> How much is half a ton in pounds? I've leg pressed 970 lbs.

I've got 30 lbs on ya.  I'd have more, but the machine was maxed out.
That was the only time I've lifted in a gym... but I was doing a lot
of cycling those days.

That's pretty good for not training specifically for that. Of course it depends on the angle of the leg press.

 

> For martial arts tricks I can do a 360, 360 gyro, 540, crescent 540, 720,
> 1080, front flip, side flip, feilong, tricker's aerial, b-kick, cheat 720.
> In the past I've also done back flip, aerial, btwist, double btwist, cork,
> cheat 900. You'll have to look those up cause I aint 'splainin'.

Wow, that looks fun... but does anybody actually use these in fights?

Not usually, but every now and again someone is facing a suitably inexperienced opponent to pull one off before being executed mid-flight.

Here are the only two successful cases I am aware of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zymfvBOESio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I22BQqT_Jt4

Here's a video of a "tricking battle" (action starts at 0:40):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXCKn6fQLI

 

> As you can see, I'm considered a beginner after 8 year of practice.

That's true of almost anything worth doing.

Programming for example.

Bill.

[Tom Boothby]

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Bill Hart <goodwi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> That's pretty good for not training specifically for that. Of course it
> depends on the angle of the leg press.

Ah, fair enough -- then it was only 707lbs.

[rjf]

I have changed the subject line.

In case someone actually wants to discuss flooved.

[rjf]

On Thursday, September 5, 2013 12:56:43 PM UTC-7, William Stein wrote:

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:40 AM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I'm puzzled by the choice of technology here.  TeX is not an unambiguous
> language
> for mathematics.  I dislike the verbosity of MathML, but it seems to at
> least address
> the surface-syntax issue  (while likely botching semantics).  It is not
> clear what Sage
> is exactly offering  -- is it a lingua franca for a (subset of?) interchange
> of its
> components?  Is MathML under the covers?  If not, what?
>
> What happened to MathJax?

<snip>

I never got an answer to any of these questions.

Is it because you are too busy competing with 14-yr-olds doing skateboard tricks?

Will you answer them if I answer these?

.. [x] yes, I have used TeX extensively.
   [ ] MathML and MathJax I presumably used but not by deliberately choosing them over some
available alternative.  My feelings about MathML: sad, but in some sense inevitable given the
lineage from markup languages.   MathJax I feel rather positive about.  I have seen very nice
displays, I think the adoption of MathJax as a defacto standard is probably a good thing.  If
there are bad design issues, I haven't encountered them.  I have not seen MathJax on very
large expressions, an area that usually causes problems.

  [ ]  I have used several components of Sage, so I don't know exactly what is required.  That I
use some python-ish front end?   I daresay I know a good deal more about the Maxima component
than most of the sage-flame fans.  Possibly more about GMP, MPFR too.

Your turn.

[Bill Hart]

Thanks. I'll kick off the discussion.

What's flooved?

Bill.

--

[Tom Boothby]

Excellent kick, Bill! It sounds like somebody's punchy because any
time he tries to score a point, we parry it into another topic.

If I were to guess (and I won't), flooved describes, for example, the
grass underneath an airplane that makes a close pass to the ground
without landing. Likewise, the hair on William Tell's son's head as
the apple departed.

[Bill Hart]

You mean here/hair one minute, gone the next?

By the way, have you noticed it's just us in this thread? Should we go back to the other one where there's more people?

Bill.

[Bill Hart]

Flooved is a weird site. It says it has undergraduate material. But it's mostly graduate material. I mean the one on the standard model talks about recalling stuff from your MSc days.

Similarly, I hardly think reductive groups or representation theory is undergraduate material.

Bill.

[Tom Boothby]

I'd meant 'bent to a sudden gust of wind caused by a nearby moving
object'. Yes, let's floov this thread.

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/6/2013 11:51 AM, Bill Hart wrote:
> Thanks. I'll kick off the discussion.
>
> What's flooved?
>
> Bill.
>

See the web site

publishing.mathforge.org/discussion/178

If you want to discuss flooved, you can go there, or go back to the
flooved discussion on sage-flame.

Don't you want to know how many pounds I can leg press?
Richard

[Bill Hart]

I'd guess you weigh about 60kg.

 

Richard

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[Richard Fateman]

On 9/6/2013 1:26 PM, Tom Boothby wrote:
> Excellent kick, Bill! It sounds like somebody's punchy because any
> time he tries to score a point, we parry it into another topic.

The etymology is described in the blog.

Just looking at the name I would guess
it is an editor (ed) suitable for visual terminals (cf vi), for
floos. These would
be persons both dyslexic and imprudent. Or possibly a spelling corrector
for dyslexic fans of Mr. T. (I typo the floo). vs.
"I pity the fool".

Google it, if you miss the reference.

yeah, what's Google, Tom.
RJF

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/6/2013 2:29 PM, Bill Hart wrote:

On 6 September 2013 22:28, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/6/2013 11:51 AM, Bill Hart wrote:

Thanks. I'll kick off the discussion.

What's flooved?

Bill.

See the web site

publishing.mathforge.org/discussion/178

If you want to discuss flooved, you can go there, or go back to the
flooved discussion on sage-flame.

Don't you want to know how many pounds I can leg press?

I'd guess you weigh about 60kg.

really?  Are we now talking about body weight?  Or did you mean you
guess that I can leg press 60kg?  or no more than 60kg? 

If you mean 60kg body "weight"  is that at sea level on earth, that's  too little.
If you mean 60kg body "weight" on the surface of the earth's moon, that's too much.
If you mean I can leg press 60kg (weight), yes, I could do that.  What would I have
to do with the other leg?

To help you scale, you can probably find an image of me. Add to that my height
which is about  1.88 meters  (for you, Tom,  that would be about 6'2")

Oh, to change the subject,  I just glanced at william's blog entry about editing tex 'in the cloud'
to work even on objects of size 8 megabytes.  Maybe even 80 megabytes. 
I bought a Nook tablet recently for $149+tax.  It has 16gigabytes, and I happened to have
a micro-SD card with another 16gigabytes.  So I have 32,000 megabytes  or so.
(dunno if that mega means 1,000^2 or 1024^2, but no matter).
So storing 80 megabytes in the cloud is not particularly vital.  Running an editor in the cloud?
eh.  Running an editor that almost no one else uses, supported part time by a math professor?
eh^2.  Is there really a pressing need for this?  What about Texmacs? 
Are you just making work for yourself by saying you must support all browsers, even the ones that
have bad designs that make you jump through hoops?

Note, that I have changed the subject line :)


R

[William Stein]

True or False:

[ ] RJF has actually tried the technology he is pontificating on above.

William

[Bill Hart]

Ah, I remember now. Cohn's comments reminded me, this lot also spammed me some months back.

I explained to them that I didn't know whether handing over IP developed at Warwick University, or indeed competing with them through this outlet, may in fact violate my contract with my employer.

For these reasons alone, I think the enterprise is doomed.

However, I also really don't like the business model, which is effectively, "we take all your really difficult technical work, make money out of it for ourselves, and give you nothing but an opportunity to magnify your magnanimity in return". In other words, they are a charity, but not registered as such.

Now, I wouldn't mind being magnanimous if I was sold on the actual model they had. But they really didn't sell it to me.

I actually have some specific ideas about what might add value to my content. And as it happens I have written hundreds of pages of undergraduate and graduate level notes which I haven't released publicly. But the chances of even one other academic in the world seeing things the way I do with regard to presentation of content, is precisely zero. Therefore, the best forum for my own work is my own website, when I finish writing my own content the way I think it should be presented.

Bill.

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[Bill Hart]

On 6 September 2013 23:05, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/6/2013 2:29 PM, Bill Hart wrote:

On 6 September 2013 22:28, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/6/2013 11:51 AM, Bill Hart wrote:

Thanks. I'll kick off the discussion.

What's flooved?

Bill.

See the web site

publishing.mathforge.org/discussion/178

If you want to discuss flooved, you can go there, or go back to the
flooved discussion on sage-flame.

Don't you want to know how many pounds I can leg press?

I'd guess you weigh about 60kg.

really?  Are we now talking about body weight?  Or did you mean you
guess that I can leg press 60kg?  or no more than 60kg? 

If you mean 60kg body "weight"  is that at sea level on earth, that's  too little.
If you mean 60kg body "weight" on the surface of the earth's moon, that's too much.
If you mean I can leg press 60kg (weight), yes, I could do that.  What would I have
to do with the other leg?

To help you scale, you can probably find an image of me. Add to that my height
which is about  1.88 meters  (for you, Tom,  that would be about 6'2")

Oh well, now that I know you are not diminutive, I guess I had better revise my estimate of your body weight up.

So I'll guess 80kg bodyweight. Average for your age is about 120kg.

Then again, average for my age is 140kg, and yet I can do 440kg on a good day, probably for about 3 reps. I could lift more physically, but my nervous system overloads unfortunately.

  

Oh, to change the subject,  I just glanced at william's blog entry about editing tex 'in the cloud'
to work even on objects of size 8 megabytes.  Maybe even 80 megabytes. 
I bought a Nook tablet recently for $149+tax.  It has 16gigabytes, and I happened to have
a micro-SD card with another 16gigabytes.  So I have 32,000 megabytes  or so.
(dunno if that mega means 1,000^2 or 1024^2, but no matter).
So storing 80 megabytes in the cloud is not particularly vital.  Running an editor in the cloud?
eh.  Running an editor that almost no one else uses, supported part time by a math professor?
eh^2.  Is there really a pressing need for this?  What about Texmacs? 
Are you just making work for yourself by saying you must support all browsers, even the ones that
have bad designs that make you jump through hoops?

I actually seriously looked for something that would do what William's tex editor will do, and couldn't find it. I was delighted to find it.

The process I was using before that was the following:

* edit latex in Wordpad on my PC

* upload file to remote linux computer using WinSCP

* latex file on remote computer using pdflatex

* copy pdf file back to PC

* remember that pdf file is already open on PC, blocking transfer

* close pdf file

* copy file again

* reopen pdf file

Now I do the following:

* edit latex on https://cloud.sagemath.com/

* press CTRL-S

Admittedly I could format my hard drive and just install linux. But William has slightly more in mind than my simple use case. It just happens to be a very useful product for me at this time.

I've tried texmacs, and it's great, really. But I actually prefer to use https://cloud.sagemath.com/ at the moment, for a variety of reasons.

Note, that I have changed the subject line :)

Indeed.

Bill.

 

R 

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[Richard Fateman]

Your thoughtful comments should probably appear on sage-devel where the flooved discussion
began, before it was relegated by William to sage-flame.  I agree with your comments on the
business model.

RJF

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[Richard Fateman]

On 9/6/2013 4:21 PM, Bill Hart wrote:

On 6 September 2013 23:05, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:

really?  Are we now talking about body weight?  Or did you mean you
guess that I can leg press 60kg?  or no more than 60kg? 

If you mean 60kg body "weight"  is that at sea level on earth, that's  too little.
If you mean 60kg body "weight" on the surface of the earth's moon, that's too much.
If you mean I can leg press 60kg (weight), yes, I could do that.  What would I have
to do with the other leg?

To help you scale, you can probably find an image of me. Add to that my height
which is about  1.88 meters  (for you, Tom,  that would be about 6'2")

Oh well, now that I know you are not diminutive, I guess I had better revise my estimate of your body weight up.

OK

So I'll guess 80kg bodyweight. Average for your age is about 120kg.

I have weighed 80kg or so within the last 10 years, but unfortunately somewhat more at the moment.
Average of 120kg is stunning. 

Then again, average for my age is 140kg, and yet I can do 440kg on a good day, probably for about 3 reps. I could lift more physically, but my nervous system overloads unfortunately.

I increase the weight until I can't do 15 reps.

  

Oh, to change the subject,  I just glanced at william's blog entry about editing tex 'in the cloud'
to work even on objects of size 8 megabytes.  Maybe even 80 megabytes. 
I bought a Nook tablet recently for $149+tax.  It has 16gigabytes, and I happened to have
a micro-SD card with another 16gigabytes.  So I have 32,000 megabytes  or so.
(dunno if that mega means 1,000^2 or 1024^2, but no matter).
So storing 80 megabytes in the cloud is not particularly vital.  Running an editor in the cloud?
eh.  Running an editor that almost no one else uses, supported part time by a math professor?
eh^2.  Is there really a pressing need for this?  What about Texmacs? 
Are you just making work for yourself by saying you must support all browsers, even the ones that
have bad designs that make you jump through hoops?

I actually seriously looked for something that would do what William's tex editor will do, and couldn't find it. I was delighted to find it.

The process I was using before that was the following:

* edit latex in Wordpad on my PC

* upload file to remote linux computer using WinSCP

* latex file on remote computer using pdflatex

* copy pdf file back to PC

* remember that pdf file is already open on PC, blocking transfer

* close pdf file

* copy file again

* reopen pdf file

Now I do the following:

* edit latex on https://cloud.sagemath.com/

* press CTRL-S

Huh? Here's what I do. run emacs, 3 windows. run Maxima (or something else that generates
TeX on command) in one.  Text file  in text mode in another.

I edit using emacs.  If I want to convert a formula f in Maxima to TeX, I run the command  tex(f), and
paste the result into the text at the appropriate place.   Usually the texification of formulas by
Maxima, Mathematica  leaves a little to be desired.  Maybe the line breaks are not quite right,
or the ordering of terms is non-intuitive, so I edit a little.
I save the file.
In the third (just a few lines high) window I run a shell.   In it I type  pdflatex.  Errors -> edit some.
no Errors -> open it using Adobe reader or acrobat.

I think emacs could also have a pdf window, but I haven't bothered to figure it out.

So some of our activities look the same, but copying seems unnecessary.

I can do this without being internet connected.  Though I would occasionally want to back up
the text file somewhere.

Admittedly I could format my hard drive and just install linux. But William has slightly more in mind than my simple use case. It just happens to be a very useful product for me at this time.

I do all this on windows XP.  not linux.

I've tried texmacs, and it's great, really. But I actually prefer to use https://cloud.sagemath.com/ at the moment, for a variety of reasons.

I haven't used texmacs recently.   It would be nice to tell its author how you prefer sage's editor.

RJF

[rjf]

On Friday, September 6, 2013 3:58:51 PM UTC-7, William Stein wrote:

.....
 

True or False:

   [ ] RJF has actually tried the technology he is pontificating on above.

William

Oh, are we back in the answer-a-question-with-a-question game?
 
[ ............. ] What technology are you referring to? Texmacs?

Here are two True or False questions:

[  ] Self praise is no recommendation.

[  ] Should we change the subject line?




RJF

[Dima Pasechnik]

On 2013-09-07, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Friday, September 6, 2013 3:58:51 PM UTC-7, William Stein wrote:
>
> .....
>
>
>> True or False:
>>
>> [ ] RJF has actually tried the technology he is pontificating on above.
>>
>> William
>>
>> Oh, are we back in the answer-a-question-with-a-question game?
>
> [ ............. ] What technology are you referring to? Texmacs?

Do you know that it is developed and supported, part-time, by a maths professor?!

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/7/2013 12:54 AM, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> On 2013-09-07, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Friday, September 6, 2013 3:58:51 PM UTC-7, William Stein wrote:
>>
>> .....
>>
>>
>>> True or False:
>>>
>>> [ ] RJF has actually tried the technology he is pontificating on above.
>>>
>>> William
>>>
>>> Oh, are we back in the answer-a-question-with-a-question game?
>>
>> [ ............. ] What technology are you referring to? Texmacs?
> Do you know that it is developed and supported, part-time, by a maths professor?!

I think, perhaps by accident, you answered a question instead of asking
another one. So you asked
if RJF has used Texmacs. The answer is: yes.
So now I answered a question too.

Here's another answer. Joris is apparently not alone, but even if he
were, he is an amazingly productive
person.

And now a question back.

[ ] Do you believe that professional programmers, full-time,
presumably paid to do programming,
debugging, customer support, etc --- who may be part-owners of a
start-up software company --
can produce better software than (say) amateur part-time students unpaid
(or low paid) lead by
amateur unpaid (or low paid) professors of mathematics. Professors who,
by and large, are
learning about computer systems by the seat of their pants?

And in a similar vein
[ ] Would you trust a dentist to work on your teeth if he(she, etc)
explained that although he
hadn't actually taken attended dental school, he had a great interest in
teeth, and had looked in
a lot of people's mouths, and had lots of friends who also hadn't
attended dental school -- some
were still in high school -- and they were all interested in teeth.
And they would be helping him
work on your teeth. But not to worry. He wouldn't charge you anything.

RJF

[Dima Pasechnik]

First of all, define "software". We might be talking about different things. You might
mean a commodity which you're not supposed to modify - or even not even
actually own? Such as a general purpose CA system?
No, we are talking about something a bit different.
(e.g. stuff that does anvenced computational group theory and number
theory).
The market for such software is too small to
for a successful commercial vendor. The only semi-commercial player in the
field is Magma, and Magma is supported by grant money a lot.
In such a setting your question does not make sense.

And the answer to your question for the setting, say, of a general-purpose CA system,
is sometimes yes, sometimes no. In sweatshops in developing countries - no.
Working for huge Kafkian-style corporations - it depends, but often - no.
Driven by impossible deadlines and investor pressure - no.
Fixing bugs timely - no.

By the way, I am sure that the majority of full-time developers of
commercial CA systems have degrees in maths rather than in CS.
Would you call them "professional programmers"?
No, of course they all "learnt about computer systems by the seat of
their pants".

>
> And in a similar vein
> [ ] Would you trust a dentist to work on your teeth if he(she, etc)
> explained that although he
> hadn't actually taken attended dental school, he had a great interest in
> teeth, and had looked in
> a lot of people's mouths, and had lots of friends who also hadn't
> attended dental school -- some
> were still in high school -- and they were all interested in teeth.
> And they would be helping him
> work on your teeth. But not to worry. He wouldn't charge you anything.
>

in case if dentists refused to work on your teeth (indeed, why not - say,
that can see that the profit margin is too low), yes, that's better than toothache, don't
you think so?
And this is describing the

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/7/2013 8:06 AM, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> On 2013-09-07, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/7/2013 12:54 AM, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>>> On 2013-09-07, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Friday, September 6, 2013 3:58:51 PM UTC-7, William Stein wrote:
>>>>
>>>> .....
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> True or False:
>>>>>
>>>>> [ ] RJF has actually tried the technology he is pontificating on above.
>>>>>
>>>>> William
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh, are we back in the answer-a-question-with-a-question game?
>>>>
>>>> [ ............. ] What technology are you referring to? Texmacs?
>>> Do you know that it is developed and supported, part-time, by a maths professor?!
>> I think, perhaps by accident, you answered a question instead of asking
>> another one. So you asked
>> if RJF has used Texmacs. The answer is: yes.
>> So now I answered a question too.
>>
>> Here's another answer. Joris is apparently not alone, but even if he
>> were, he is an amazingly productive
>> person.

I visited the texmacs pages online and found this:

http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/about/authors.en.html

which lists about 34 contributors. There are many other contributors
too, who
have authored "plug-ins".

>> And now a question back.
>>
>> [ ] Do you believe that professional programmers, full-time,
>> presumably paid to do programming,
>> debugging, customer support, etc --- who may be part-owners of a
>> start-up software company --
>> can produce better software than (say) amateur part-time students unpaid
>> (or low paid) lead by
>> amateur unpaid (or low paid) professors of mathematics. Professors who,
>> by and large, are
>> learning about computer systems by the seat of their pants?
> First of all, define "software". We might be talking about different things. You might
> mean a commodity which you're not supposed to modify - or even not even
> actually own?

No, I would include programs generally which might run the gamut from
cloud-based proprietary
rented programs to one-of-a-kind solutions to homework problems.

> Such as a general purpose CA system?

Sure, that's software.

> No, we are talking about something a bit different.
> (e.g. stuff that does anvenced computational group theory and number
> theory).

Eh, still software. Just not commercially viable. There's tons of that.
There are 775,000 iphone apps as of Jan, 2013. 300,000 native to ipad,
according to this:
http://ipod.about.com/od/iphonesoftwareterms/qt/apps-in-app-store.htm

How many text editors are there for MS Windows? thousands? I couldn't
find an estimate.

How many MATHEMATICS editors are there for MS Windows? I can think of a
few. Google
found a few more.
TexMacs, Mathematica (workbook), Maple (workbook), Scientific Word, MS
Word equation
plug-in, MathType, Sciweaver, Mathcast.

> The market for such software is too small to
> for a successful commercial vendor. The only semi-commercial player in the
> field is Magma, and Magma is supported by grant money a lot.
> In such a setting your question does not make sense.

OK, if you feel that Magma is in fact better or equal software and you
can buy it for
(say) $1,000, or $10,000 -- enough for doing your math research, why
should a
granting agency pay an academic institution $100,000 to build another
piece of software
to do the same thing?

I would hope that you have to argue that the $100,000 is spent on
building some that is
better suited to a particular problem, and/or people are getting
valuable training, or some
other motive. Why would a gov't grant a university money to run a
tax-paying company out
of business? (Even if it is an Australian company...) Why would a
university risk its non-profit
status by engaging in business competition?

>
> And the answer to your question for the setting, say, of a general-purpose CA system,
> is sometimes yes, sometimes no. In sweatshops in developing countries - no.

My understanding is that in China, commercial software is routinely
pirated. Thus the
number of licenses for Mathematica in China may be far far lower than
the number of
copies available.

I doubt that Chinese programmers are being hired for sweatshop wages to
build
commercial CAS, or Magma-like programs.

Mathematica has tried to branch out -- to be an all-purpose web host
with access to
curated knowledge about real-time stock prices, geography, artificial
intelligence (like
Siri) etc.

> Working for huge Kafkian-style corporations - it depends, but often - no.
> Driven by impossible deadlines and investor pressure - no.
> Fixing bugs timely - no.

I guess I've lost the thread here. If you think the only way to build
number theory, combinatorics, geometry
(or whatever) programs is either by abusive or marginal semi-commercial
operations like Magma, or
by GPL Sage-like operations, that may be right.

If WS asks the NSF to support him to build Sage to be just like Magma
but free, I fully expect them
to reject such a proposal. This would be of no merit in terms of
mathematics or computer science.
So how to fund it? You could paint it as an educational tool (see STEM
funding), or you could
identify some niche that Magma cannot do, or you could say Magma is
just crap and we know
better and can attack a whole bunch of math problems (neglecting to
mention that there are
only 15 people in the world who understand what they are, and of them,
only 2 who give a damn...)

>
> By the way, I am sure that the majority of full-time developers of
> commercial CA systems have degrees in maths rather than in CS.

That could be. I think it was not the case for Macsyma.
Mathematica probably has more developers doing graphics, web, etc stuff than
actual mathematical computation. I don't know if they are math grads.
Of the
original Mathematica "team" of 5 or so, I think there were more
physicists.

One reason for hiring holders of math degrees is that they have fewer
opportunities
than computer science grads, who have been in high demand, though it
fluctuates.

Another reason is the computer science grads do not necessarily know much
mathematics. This has (negatively) affected certain CAS of the past,
and some
still being built. The attitudes, crudely include:

"All I need to know about {numbers, floating-point numbers, polynomials} I
learned in intro to CS, or high school."

"What do you mean I can't divide in a Ring, whatever that is. Watch me!"

"What I would really like to program is a plotting program / user
interface program /
..... .Don't tell me about the 10 previous programs that have the same
functionality."

> Would you call them "professional programmers"?
> No, of course they all "learnt about computer systems by the seat of
> their pants".

Some become excellent programmers. Some are really poor programmers.
Would they become better programmers faster if they were educated by CS
professionals? I would like to think yes, but so far as I know, we
don't know how
to turn some run-of-the-mill mediocre programmer into a spectacular one.
I think we are pretty good at identifying people who should find another
occupation.

>> And in a similar vein
>> [ ] Would you trust a dentist to work on your teeth if he(she, etc)
>> explained that although he
>> hadn't actually taken attended dental school, he had a great interest in
>> teeth, and had looked in
>> a lot of people's mouths, and had lots of friends who also hadn't
>> attended dental school -- some
>> were still in high school -- and they were all interested in teeth.
>> And they would be helping him
>> work on your teeth. But not to worry. He wouldn't charge you anything.
>>
> in case if dentists refused to work on your teeth (indeed, why not - say,
> that can see that the profit margin is too low), yes, that's better than toothache, don't
> you think so?

But there ARE dentists (and there is Magma, and a few other programs too) .


I see writing a math grant proposal to add capabilities to Singular as
more plausible ..
as research .. than hiring an underqualified student to write python
programs to attach Singular
to (whatever) or to augment scipy etc to "do the same thing".

[Tom Boothby]

> yeah, what's Google, Tom.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=google

[Dima Pasechnik]

On 2013-09-07, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The market for such software is too small to
>> for a successful commercial vendor. The only semi-commercial player in the
>> field is Magma, and Magma is supported by grant money a lot.
>> In such a setting your question does not make sense.
> OK, if you feel that Magma is in fact better or equal software and you
> can buy it for
> (say) $1,000, or $10,000 -- enough for doing your math research, why
> should a
> granting agency pay an academic institution $100,000 to build another
> piece of software
> to do the same thing?

No, I don't feel this way, not at all. As a matter of fact, I have a
project together with coding theory people, about certain kind of codes.
They use Magma a lot. The trouble is, we need to process data generated
by Magma using a linear programming solver. Now, Magma has its own LP
solver, IIRC, but it doesn't do a good job. OK, so I thought we can use
a commercial LP solver, such as CPLEX - you know, writing data to files,
etc - but nope, they aren't good enough for our data, either (rounding
errors) -- and you need to run some kind of dispatcher to talk to Magma
and to these solvers, anyway, as Magma doesn't have an appropriate API.
The solution: use Sage, which has a fast arbitary precision LP solver
(from PPL), and a Magma interface (crude, but it does the job easier
than file I/O).

Yes, it actually took hiring a CS undergrad to write a fast interface
between Sage and PPL LP solver.
Yes, I paid him an equivalent of 5 single-user licences of Magma.

Anyhow, the point is that this kind of software is akin to publishing. You
can publish with a commercial publisher, or you can roll your own.
The trouble with a commercial publisher is that then a copy of your work (an
addon to Magma, say) is prohibitevely expensive to use by someone
without a prior Magma license. Imagine you wrote a paper which can only
be read on a device that you must rent for 3 years at a cost of $1000,
and if you want your student to read it at home, you'd need to fork
another $1000, etc...

> I would hope that you have to argue that the $100,000 is spent on
> building some that is
> better suited to a particular problem, and/or people are getting
> valuable training, or some
> other motive.

Other motive? Sure. It's called acquiring and spreading the knowledge.
That's the primary purpose of existence of universities, grants, etc.
Spredaing, instead of locking it away for $1000 a hit...

> Why would a gov't grant a university money to run a
> tax-paying company out
> of business? (Even if it is an Australian company...) Why would a
> university risk its non-profit
> status by engaging in business competition?

Is Magma tax-paying? I doubt so.

[Richard Fateman]

Academic publishing is undergoing some significant changes (finally) toward
open-access online journals. People are trying to find new ways of scamming
the system, apparently by charging authors per page. The "publishers" then
have the incentive to publish any old garbage that someone offers them.

Professional association which make money on journals have to figure out
a way around this..

>> I would hope that you have to argue that the $100,000 is spent on
>> building some that is
>> better suited to a particular problem, and/or people are getting
>> valuable training, or some
>> other motive.
> Other motive? Sure. It's called acquiring and spreading the knowledge.
> That's the primary purpose of existence of universities, grants, etc.
> Spredaing, instead of locking it away for $1000 a hit...

That's not necessarily true. What if money collected by Magma is used
to support
math graduate students doing research, professional programmers who are
far more capable of making advances in the software,(and who should be
paid a living wage, not asked to work for charity). Maybe there are
other things
being supported. An almshouse for disabled mathematicians. Who knows.

Someone claims that "knowledge wants to be free". The other side of the
coin is
that persons who create "intellectual property" "want to be paid".

>> Why would a gov't grant a university money to run a
>> tax-paying company out
>> of business? (Even if it is an Australian company...) Why would a
>> university risk its non-profit
>> status by engaging in business competition?
> Is Magma tax-paying? I doubt so.

If it is still at the university and all revenues are appropriately
disbursed to support
research, students, costs of the institute etc. probably it doesn't pay
taxes. That
sounds probable. Even less reason to compete with it.


>
>

[Tom Boothby]

pies baked today

[x] peach

[Harald Schilly]

On Saturday, September 7, 2013 3:29:21 AM UTC+2, rjf wrote:

If I want to convert a formula f in Maxima to TeX, I run the command  tex(f), and
paste the result into the text at the appropriate place.  

This means, you actually copy + paste expressions? What a waste of time!

Do you know SageTeX? Does have Maxima a similar mode?

SageTeX allows you to embed the equivalent of your "tex(f)" inside the .tex file. Then, a pre-processor runs over the file and evaluates all these statements. Then, LaTeX on its own is able to pick up these results. This not only works for formulas, but also for plots.
 
H

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/21/2013 2:17 AM, Harald Schilly wrote:

On Saturday, September 7, 2013 3:29:21 AM UTC+2, rjf wrote:

If I want to convert a formula f in Maxima to TeX, I run the command  tex(f), and
paste the result into the text at the appropriate place.  

This means, you actually copy + paste expressions? What a waste of time!

Yes, but often I find that I'd prefer a slightly different ordering or line break or equation numbering than is automatically
produced by any of the computer algebra systems' TeX generation.  So I end up fiddling with the editor.
It seems to me it would generally be a discourtesy to the reader to spew out into a legitimate journal article a large number of automatically computer-generated formula outputs.
About the only time that would make sense it seems to me is if you are actually writing a paper about the technology of spewing out TeX from a computer algebra system.

Do you know SageTeX?

No, but I looked at a tutorial just now..  It seems you need to do this..

• run LaTeX on your .tex file;
• run Sage on the generated .sage file;
• run LaTeX again.

Actually, it seems to me that you have to do a bunch more. 
1. Perfect your Sage computational scheme
2. Learn the SageTex  command structure.
3. Using a text editor embed all your commands into a "batch" file which is also TeX.
4. Do the little song and dance above until it is debugged, presumably on a system
that has Sage and SageTex installed.
5. Eyeball the output to make sure it conforms to expected notation.  e.g.
compare E=mc^2  to  E=c^2m etc etc
6. If any changes were made in step 5, revise the section of Sage commands in
the input file that produced that segment and insert the correct TeX output, while
still doing the computation in Sage to maintain the context. Just not use it to generate
TeX.

So it may sound like SageTeX is a good idea, but it is probably quite clumsy.
Compare to cut and paste and maybe edit the desired formula.

Does have Maxima a similar mode?

I think the question is: does TeX have a similar Maxima mode?

While I suppose the same kind of thing could be done with a TeX  macro set to link to Maxima,
I am not aware of anyone doing so.  Maybe it has been done though.  Certainly
TeXmacs has a related facility and can produce a TeX file if necessary.  TeXmacs
probably has a way more advanced WYSIWYG user interface for math than the typical text editor
that might be used in step 3 above.

SageTeX allows you to embed the equivalent of your "tex(f)" inside the .tex file. Then, a pre-processor runs over the file and evaluates all these statements. Then, LaTeX on its own is able to pick up these results. This not only works for formulas, but also for plots.

Maxima has a plot option to produce postscript.  Having a postscript file is just one step -- typically
I have had to fiddle with labels, location of the plot in the text, etc. Re-doing a computation that
produces a plot can be time-consuming. Frankly it may be better to NOT repeat it all each time
one decides to edit the file for an article.

So, all-in-all, SageTeX seems to me like a feature that can be nicely demo'd  but is severely
klunky for authors of serious mathematics.  You may think it is really neato and that cut and paste
is bad, but copying a formula from a maxima buffer to a TeX buffer in emacs could be done in a
few keystrokes, without the use of a mouse necessarily.   But that might just be the first cut of
making a really nice TeX form.

An alternative waste of time is the time dealing with steps 1-6 above.  And I haven't even included
the time wasted for installing Sage, installing Sage macros in TeX, reading the associated documentation,
etc.

 Note that the typical writer of mathematical journal articles is not necessarily conversant with
computer management, and (just a guess) may not have write-access to the relevant TeX directory.

I hope these comments strike you as useful, and you can filter out my belligerent tone as appropriate.
It takes too long for me to follow guidelines to produce "constructive criticism" from my comments.

 
H

[Richard Fateman]

On 9/21/2013 8:23 AM, Harald Schilly wrote:

On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Richard Fateman <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems to me it would generally be a discourtesy to the reader to spew out
into a legitimate journal article a large number of automatically
computer-generated formula outputs.

in statistics, i.e. the well known R software, the have a similar tool
for including data and results in papers. It's called Sweave. It also
fills up the paper with tables of numbers and all kinds of plots.

Formulas are what I was considering as the primary use of TeX since you
asked about Maxima, and that is what the Maxima TeX does, mostly.   Though
I suppose TeX on matrix stuff  could be used.  The commercial Macsyma
people designed and implemented a bunch of data handling stuff, but I'm
unaware of any effort to bring that into Maxima.

 In my experience, generating tables for
display generally requires a delicate touch, to set column width, headers,
formats etc.
  I've never tried generating a large TeX table from Maxima.

Weave and Tangle are long-time components of the TeX world.

Actually, it seems to me that you have to do a bunch more.
1. Perfect your Sage computational scheme

no idea what that means

Unless  you are thinking of computations that you wish to display that are entirely
self-contained in one  $\sage ... $ section, you would normally have a sequential
development of some sort of (perhaps numbered) equations etc in some
context.   You have to write out a "batch" file.  That's what I mean by the scheme.

2. Learn the SageTex  command structure.

there are two latex commands, i.e. \sage{ ... } and \sageplot{ ... }
you actually need to know. if you already mastered latex, it shouldn't
be too hard.

You have to understand what the commands in Sage generate -- unless the only things you
are generating are, say integers.   And even then, does Sage allow you to choose to
display numbers via Tex as   1,234,567    vs  1234567  ?

3. Using a text editor embed all your commands into a "batch" file which is
also TeX.

you don't have to re-write everything. if you have more code, you can
call it as a library.

Huh?  You use a text editor to write in a file stuff like
...
\title{}
...
The formula above can be rearranged to be   *
$\sage command sequence.... $  *

Of course you don't have to rewrite everything,   just that you have to write everything  At least once.
Previously if you developed some formula using Sage, you might want to save that formula
(cut and paste).  It is unlikely that you want to save the whole interactive sequence, unless by chance
you were so careful that you had no false leads or typos or trial-and-error parts.  So you have to
edit some file of code to contain the minimal correct sequence to put into your batch  or SageTex file.
If you want to stuff things into a library, I suppose you think that is a good solution, better than
cut and paste?

 otherwise i'm not sure what you mean.

you are also not forced to re-write all the formulas, that's optional!

Well, you don't have to rewrite the formulas, you can cut them from your interactive transcript
perhaps, and paste them into your TeX source file.  Oh, did I say cut and paste?

4. Do the little song and dance above until it is debugged, presumably on a
system
that has Sage and SageTex installed.

have you heard of online tools like http://cloud.sagemath.com ? 

I don't see how that changes the fact that you have to edit your file until the sage commands
have no syntax errors, repeatedly running it through TeX.

Not that I really care, but let's just say your Sage command has a bug, and goes into an
infinite loop. Just for arguments' sake, consider  (a) local Sage  (b) Sage in the cloud.
Remember, using Sage+TeX is simple, ... you only need to know  \sage
How do you even know what happened?

5. Eyeball the output to make sure it conforms to expected notation.  e.g.
compare E=mc^2  to  E=c^2m etc etc

it's optional, you do not have to rewrite all your formulas. despite
that, both are correct.

You think it is optional to have your formulas presented in the most readable fashion?
Not in well-refereed journals.  You may not be familiar with any, especially since they
represent a decreasing percentage of math publications.

 Some formulas DO come out in proper form as well as
correct, but, again in my experience, it is something of a crap-shoot to see if (say)
a non-linear differential equation is typeset exactly right.  And notations that
were just made up for the purposes of a paper are unlikely to come out right.

So it may sound like SageTeX is a good idea, but it is probably quite
clumsy.
Compare to cut and paste and maybe edit the desired formula.

it helps you, if you for example change some values or a function at
the beginning for your document. that change immediately propagates
down the document.

In other words, you decided to change the calculation after you wrote the paper.
I think most people would figure out the computation and THEN write the paper.

Even so, if you have your computation all set out and depending on a parameter,
embedded in a batch file, then with Maxima
what you can do is direct the various formatted formulas  to destination files that can be
\ included in the main TeX file.  In fact this seems to me a reasonable approach.

it's also the case, that latex can be used for more than just writing
papers containing formulas.

You mean LaTeX can be used for FORMATTING papers...
You need to use a text editor like emacs, vi, TeXmacs, MSWord, etc.. to write.
And there are systems specialized for scientific stuff.. TeXmacs, Scientific Word, etc

Re-doing a computation that
produces a plot can be time-consuming. Frankly it may be better to NOT
repeat it all each time
one decides to edit the file for an article.

that's the reason why sagetex has this 3-step procedure you pointed
out. only if necessary, sage is evaluated. in the usual cases - i.e.
only when latex code changes - the results are taken from the cache.
therefore it's still fast to run latex again.

That sounds like a good idea but can be really troublesome. See note below.

(FYI: a cache is an associative data store, which records all results
for given inputs.)

(FYI: a cache works for pure functional computations.  Computations which access global
data cannot, in general, be cached. Sage has a huge global data load, in general.  As a
simple example, you may run a function and cache the result,  but the next day the function's
algorithm is changed and so the result is different.  Especially if the function is called
"in the cloud" and you do not or cannot specify which version of the software is used.
 Example.  f is maxima's integrate().  One day its result is simplified differently.)
(FYI  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming‎ )

So, all-in-all, SageTeX seems to me like a feature that can be nicely demo'd
but is severely
klunky for authors of serious mathematics.

why?

You require that authors know and use a pile of software that -- even if they know TeX and Sage --
may not be as convenient or obvious to use as you think.

can you define serious mathematics?

I can give you examples of  journals that publish serious mathematics.
Here's one. Studies in Applied Mathematics.

Assuming you have access to this in some library, Just look at a few papers and see what
kind of typesetting is going on, and to what extent Sage might be unable to handle the typesetting.


> is it ok to use it for non-serious mathematics, like tests for students and in the context of statistics, physics, chemistry and biology?

It would be a terrible waste of time for students to typeset tests of course.
  Is it a waste of time for the
instructor to use Sage to typeset formulas in the presentation of an exam? Probably, but it depends
on the instructor's motivation.
  I quite doubt that Sage would usually typeset standard formulas in applied
areas in the conventional form, right off the bat.  I find that even hand-coding in TeX I have to insert
extra spaces here and there.

I suggest you look at some papers and exams and see how good a job is done by Sage. It is
apparent to me that this would be highly informative for you, because you would see the
wide gap between what can (and is) typeset using TeX in practice, and what can
be generated by a vanilla TeX generator in Sage  (or Maxima.)

 Note that the typical writer of mathematical journal articles is not
necessarily conversant with
computer management, and (just a guess) may not have write-access to the
relevant TeX directory.

how can it be, that the author of a tex document doesn't have
write-access to the tex directory? doesn't make sense to me.

Why should the author of a TeX document have the ability to over-write the tex macro files
on a shared computer?  If the author runs his/her own computer and maintains TeX on it,
sure.  Not everyone wants to be a system administrator, and even people who have
their own machines are advised for security reasons to not run as administrators.

What about writing in the "TeX in the cloud" directory?   I suppose this can all be fixed by an
expert in pathname redirection.  and we know how mathematicians love that.

and even if that would be true, the almighty powers of the "copy"
command can give you a read-write enabled copy.

If the author really knew all these tricks, he/she could get a job as a systems administrator
(and perhaps a raise).

I hope these comments strike you as useful, and you can filter out my
belligerent tone as appropriate.

i haven't looked into this flame forum for some time. thanks for
reminding me to update my filters.

No problem :)

h

[Richard Fateman]

I sent the attached message to Harald to give him some perspective
on what kinds of things might need to be typeset in "serious mathematics".
Perhaps other readers might wish to look at it...
.........

I figure you might not have access , or might be too lazy to look,
so here are a few pages from the first article I looked at.
RJF



.....





.................