Re: Octave's goals and motivations (Re: GUI)

[Victor Salit]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Carnë Draug <address@hidden> wrote:

On 29 September 2011 13:09, Victor Salit <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Carnë Draug <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>>
>> 2011/9/29 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
>> > On 28 September 2011 18:40, tilas <address@hidden> wrote:
>> >> 2. consider this simple fact of life: between 80%-90% of all
>> >> desktops are windows vs about 1%-5% linux
>> > [...] Most
>> > of the world's computers use Windows. But that doesn't mean we should
>> > accept any of these facts of life nor not attempt to improve them.
>>
>> Just would like to point out that the group 'all desktops' is of no
>> interest. The group 'desktops of people who have a use for octave'
>> maybe is and I'm guessing the 2 linux/windows populations in that
>> group will be very different.
>>
>> Carnë
>
> Are you seriously claiming that windows users have no use for octave? Did I
> get your point right? Can you substantiate this claim? (Hint: independent
> statistics/research)

No. I'm claiming that the two things (number of desktops and number of
desktops of people who have a use for octave) are different

agree

 

and you
can't substantiate your previous claim with the numbers on the
wikipedia page (which refer to the first group).

disagree: 

Let's take the most unfavorable number for the windows from that table - 80% and the most favorable for Linux - 5% of the total market.

Now you say - not every computer user needs or have a use for Octave. Agree. You also say that of those using Linux, there are more users needing Octave than of those using Windows. Let's for the sake of example say that 90% of Linux users have use for Octave as opposed to only 20% (low enough?) of Windows users. Some math now:

0.05x0.9=0.045 < 0.8*0.2=0.16

That is even with these absolutely Linux biased numbers there are 3.5 times more Windows users who have a use for Octave than Linux users.  

 

 

... My rationale is that people who have a
use for octave are people from the scientific field

an incorrect assumption. Octave is a numerical tool which has it's uses not only in science but also in the engineering. Now there are much much more engineers than scientists or better yet more corporate employed engineers and scientists vs academy employed ones. Big corporation for some reasons prefer to work with windows, and even the academy world is not homogeneous in its preferences. So again there are much more windows users who have a use for Octave than Linux users.

Victor