Mathematical software and movie enjoyment

Here is a news item about a mathematical software called Sage:

Sage can take the place of commercial software commonly used in mathematics education, in large government laboratories and in math-intensive research. The program can do anything from mapping a 12-dimensional object to calculating rainfall patterns under global warming.

The idea began in 2005, when Stein was an assistant professor at Harvard University.

“For about 10 years I had been really unhappy with the state of mathematical software,” Stein said. The big commercial programs — Matlab, Maple, Mathematica and Magma — charge license fees. The Mathematica Web page, for example, charges $2,495 for a regular license. For another program, a collaborator in Colombia was quoted about $550, a special “Third World” discount price, to buy a license to use a particular tool, Stein said.

The frustrations weren’t only financial. Commercial programs don’t always reveal how the calculations are performed. This means that other mathematicians can’t scrutinize the code to see how a computer-based calculation arrived at a result.

“Not being able to check the code of a computer-based calculation is like not publishing proofs for a mathematical theorem,” Stein said. “It’s ludicrous.”

So Stein began a year and a half of frenzied work in which he created the Sage prototype, combining decades’ worth of more specialized free mathematical software and filling in the gaps.

I have to take a look at it, and, if possible, load it on my comp.

In another news item, ScienceDaily informs us of the pleasures of watching movies in a group:

… new research suggests that the presence of other people may enhance our movie-watching experiences. Over the course of the film, movie-watchers influence one another and gradually synchronize their emotional responses. This mutual mimicry also affects each participant’s evaluation of the overall experience — the more in sync we are with the people around us, the more we like the movie.

Enjoying so many movies at IISc gymkhana, many of which, I would never have enjoyed so much but for the gym crowd (in fact, we used to classify some of the movies as movies that are ideal for watching at the gym), I can see the truth behind the conclusions of the study.

Take a look!

PS: Hat tip to Bora for the links.

Tags: mathematical software, movie watching, sage