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sn6uv

82 karma · joined May 14, 2012

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sn6uv··on Mathics – A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica
Thanks for the feedback, the web UI does have a gallery link [0] with a few interactive examples [1]. I agree though, a screenshot like this would be a good addition to the homepage.

[0] https://pasteboard.co/IdIaJNo.png [1] https://pasteboard.co/IdIc7dc.png

sn6uv··on Mathics – A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica
Just renewed it
sn6uv··on Mathics – A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica
Just renewed it
sn6uv··on Mathics – A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica
Just renewed it (not that it'll survive the HN hug of death). It's been a few years since I've touched that website.
sn6uv··on Mathics – A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica
Yes, that's roughly accurate. Jan Pöschko (the creator of Mathics) went to Wolfram in 2012 and I went to Google at the end of 2016. Since then it's been largely unmaintained as I don't have the time to work on it unfortunately
sn6uv··on The Algorithms Behind Probabilistic Programming
Nit

> The distribution must be smooth (this method doesn’t work for discrete parameters), but it need not be analytically differentiable

'Smooth' and 'analytic' both have basic technical meanings in the context of differentiability [1], [2].

Glossing over the assumptions in this way is quite misleading

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoothness [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_function

sn6uv··on The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder hits the big-data highway
I think you mean 13.468 TB/s per square mile.
sn6uv··on A toy Mathematica interpreter in Haskell
We previously used ply but ran into a few issues:

The main issue was that generating the tables was extremely slow (~15mins). We solved this by packaging the tables, but when the version of ply changed a table regeneration was forced on our users.

The recursive descent parser was also simpler and significantly more performant.

There's a short write-up on the PR: https://github.com/mathics/Mathics/pull/416

sn6uv··on A toy Mathematica interpreter in Haskell
Hidden in there (under 1.0) is "new recursive descent parser #416". We've only just finished 1.0 and haven't had a chance to announce it properly yet.
sn6uv··on A toy Mathematica interpreter in Haskell
Mathics developer here. Yes, we rewrote it. I better update the docs.
sn6uv··on Offer HN: Free logo design for an open source project
Mathics, a free and open source Mathematica interpreter is looking for its first logo.

We're planning to release a 1.0 in the next few weeks and really need a logo to accompany the release.

http://mathics.github.io/

sn6uv··on Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica
The web interface does have inbuilt docs. Code introspection and tab completion are coming as part of the new interface (in progress) see https://github.com/mathics/IMathics
sn6uv··on Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica
That's right. Mathics is still maintained. There are currently two of us working on it. The last release was v0.9 in March this year.
sn6uv··on Open source is now ready to compete with Mathematica for use in the classroom
I'd say jupyter notebooks surpass Mathematica UX wise.

I maintain Mathics [1] which has it's own web interface e.g. [2]. I don't think the Mathics interface is as nice as MMA but the documentation bar on the side is really nice.

[1] https://mathics.github.io/ [2] http://mathics.angusgriffith.com/

sn6uv··on Open source is now ready to compete with Mathematica for use in the classroom
Great idea!

I'm working on a fully featured jupyter kernel that will eventually get merged into the main Mathics repo [1]. I was planning to inquire about some hosting in a couple of weeks (once my exams are over and I have a chance to finish the jupyter kernel off).

Edit: [1] https://github.com/sn6uv/Mathics/tree/jupyter

sn6uv··on Open source is now ready to compete with Mathematica for use in the classroom
Mathics is a similar project, although the aim is to be an open source interpreter of the Wolfram (Mathematica) language.

It's analogous to the Octave/Matlab relationship.

The development team is also much smaller; I'm the only one contributing regularly to Mathics at the moment. Happy to answer questions.

sn6uv··on Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)
What's wrong with two column proofs? I think they're a great tool for getting into the absolutely rigorous mindset required for maths. Leslie Lamport even makes the case that professional mathematicians should use them to reduce publication errors [1].

My personal feeling (as a maths grad student) is that the utility of two column proofs depends on the field. For logic and algorithms sure but estimating integrals it becomes tedious quickly.

[1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...

sn6uv··on Camera Zapping: Using Lasers to Temporarily Neutralize Cameras
Following your argument, it seems like there's nothing wrong with throwing a few more photons out (albeit in a coherent beam).
sn6uv··on I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language
Mathics maintainer here.I'm glad you find Mathics fun to contribute to, I certainly do. Each function is a small independent part so it's really easy to get involved (that's a major goal of mine at least) Thanks for your contribution.
sn6uv··on Wolfram Language
There's also Mathics (I'm one of the maintainers).

> but with such a huge size, the language would be near impossible for one single individual to implement a compatible version.

As a single individual who has tried, yes it's impossible but a subset is doable.

sn6uv··on SymPy – simplify
What version of Sympy are you using?

I get (tested Sympy 0.7.2-0.7.4):

    >>> simplify(exp(x)/exp(x - 1))
    E
sn6uv··on Mathematica on Raspberry Pi for free
That's the idea! In practise, we're still getting there and you may have to work around functions not yet implemented in Mathics.

I'd really like to see Mathics become the Octave of Mathematica.

sn6uv··on Mathematica on Raspberry Pi for free
Practically all of the symbolic computation done by Mathics uses Sympy. It depends what your interests are. If you're interested in Symbolic computation I'd suggest Sympy. It's a really nice pure python package and it's easy to get started.

If you're familiar with / interested in Mathematica, I'd suggest helping Mathics out. The Mathematica language is massive, and there's heaps of low hanging fruit left in Mathics.

(Mathics core developer here btw)

sn6uv··on Mathematica on Raspberry Pi for free
Mathics core developer here

We used to integrate with Sage, but no longer. The main reason is that it wasn't really used for anything, but made installing Mathics much more complicated

sn6uv··on Show HN: A Dashboard for External Monitors
Bug report (can't find a bug tracker anywhere): The "Notes" panel can't be moved with click and drag.

Chrome 30.0.1599.66 on 64bit (Arch) Linux.

sn6uv··on Engineering the $325,000 Burger
> I'd rather a bolt to the brain than having my throat sliced open and being left to bleed out.

Agree.

> Free range chickens still die, which is often the ethical reason for vegetarians/vegans.

Disagree. For me at least the death itself is comparatively insignificant. What's far more significant is horrible conditions in which many mass produced meat animals spend their lives, i.e. Factory farming.

sn6uv··on Engineering the $325,000 Burger
The problem with free range (at least in Australia) is that it doesn't really mean what customers expect it to.

Often the only difference is that a free range barn will have a small outside area, which the chickens may not access because all the food is inside [1].

I think most vegetarians/vegans would agree that Halal meat is ethically worse than the 'bolt to the brain' alternative. Of course this is a sweeping generalisation.

[1] http://kb.rspca.org.au/What-is-the-difference-between-free-r...

sn6uv··on Python's sad, unimaginative Enum
range(1,4)* because it counts from 1 (range counts from 0).
sn6uv··on A second experiment concerning mathematical writing
a and b are real numbers, namely the radius of two balls. They forgot to define B_a, but typically B_a(x) := {y in X : d(x, y) < a} where (X,d) is the metric space.

I agree with you though, I don't think it's option (a)

sn6uv··on A Brief Intro to Profiling in Python
It's up again now
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