Re: [Axiom-developer] Comparison of CAS's?

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

"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