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Re: [Axiom-developer] Comparison of CAS's?
From: |
Gabriel Dos Reis |
Subject: |
Re: [Axiom-developer] Comparison of CAS's? |
Date: |
05 Jun 2007 10:56:34 -0500 |
"Alasdair McAndrew" <address@hidden> writes:
| As far as I know, nobody has tried to compare CAS's since Michael Wester's
| attempts in the 1990's.
Not that I know of. I believe Wester's work date back from late
1990s. Everywhere else in computer science, that would be an
eternity, but not in compuer algebra it seems...
I believe many of his issues with Axioms are still unresolved.
| And even then, his final test, which had over 500
| problems purporting to be from "all areas of mathematics" was not in any way
| comprehensive: no topology, no abstract algebra, not much logic, nothing on
| graphics, and so on. And these tests only tested the "breadth" of a system
| - the number of different problems it could spit out a correct answer to.
| In these tests, and in some smaller ones developed by Barry Simon, Axiom
| performed very poorly.
|
| Nobody that I know of has attempted a more modern comparison, looking a
| depth as much as breadth.
Maybe because the task is not so trivial. I believe Wester did an
excellent job.
| It may well be that Axiom does not have the
| black-box problem solving abilities of some of its rivals (put a problem in,
| get an answer out), but it may be that in depth and in its fundamental
| design paradigms, it outweighs others.
Maybe. Most people drive a car for the service it provides. Many
people use CASes for similar reasons.
| Does anybody know of any research in this area? I started a while back
| trying to get some material together to write a small article comparing
| CAS's for teaching and learning, but never got very far with it (something
| common to all my projects at the moment!)
|
| It seems to me that this would be a worthwhile effort.
Yes, but it is not a simple task.
You need to know all systems you compare in depth enough to make
a fair comparision. Furthermore, CASes are to solve problems. So you
have to come up with realistic problems to solve and express the
solutions in "native styles" for each of them.
-- Gaby