Timeline for How do we explain the use of a software on a math paper?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
47 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 20, 2019 at 17:22 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | and almost everywhere publishing is a pre-req. to get grants. So you see, it's directly related to one's income, one cannot say it's non-commercial. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 17:20 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | Well, in some countries you get bonuses for publishing (good) papers. I was getting these while working in Singapore :-) | |
| May 20, 2019 at 17:03 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : I think Wolfram Inc's concern is just with commericial use of Mathematica, and the publication of a paper is not such use. Anyway, once again, these licensing matters are almost entirely beside the point, because the output of the Mathematica commands like Maximize[] can be verified by any other available relevant software, and so, Mathematica is not really needed for such verification. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 16:36 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis work is also stuff one publishes; the restriction basically says that one cannot legally publish work done with help of so licensed Mma. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 14:09 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : I did not notice those licensing restrictions. Now I see that the apparently most relevant restricted use of that home edition of Mathematica is this: "Work or research in which the product benefits your work" (emphasis mine). So, if a person works, say, for a company that is not interested in mathematics or Mathematica, then I don't see why he/she cannot use the home edition of Mathematica to do mathematics. However, all this licensing discussion is almost entirely beside the point, the point being about the choice delineated in my previous "boils down to" comment. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 13:52 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis thus you have a Mma license paid by your employer, no problem for you. I mentioned that an unaffiliated individual may need a £2K+ p.a. license to be able to do academic work, and you disagreed, saying that a "hobby" license is much less. I pointed out that the latter won't do. Do you agree that a "hobby" license you pointed at specifically excludes the kind of use we are talking about? Or you will continue to pretend you have no clue? | |
| May 20, 2019 at 13:07 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | It looks like this discussion boils down to this choice: Should I (i) try to use my main (I think) comparative advantage to produce mathematics hopefully of interest to other people or should I (ii) instead spend time trying to learn and use software that other people can use to check the output of commands like Maximize[]? | |
| May 20, 2019 at 13:05 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : You originally mentioned "your code" (that is, my code), and now you are talking about Mathematica's internal code, which is certainly not mine. Also, as I said earlier, I don't know if anyone would like to read all that internal code, even if transcribed into (quite possibly at least hundreds of pages of) human language. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:59 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : The Mathematica home-use license was given to me by my (academic) institution for work on my personal computers, and I don't think I need a lawyer to use it for research. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:55 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : You are free to use all kinds of epithets like "crippled", "actually blind", "total non-expert", "willingly admit", etc. The matter is simply that those "crucial" differences between versions of Windows (say) make no difference for my needs in mathematics and elsewhere. If they matter to you, enjoy! | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:46 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis if you don't know a difference between Windows Home and Pro, and willingly admit to being a total non-expert on this matter, why do you even make such comments? "I don't see a difference cause I am actually blind" :-P | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:43 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis - no, thanks, before following your advice on Mma versions one must talk to a lawyer :-) | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:41 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis Once again, there is no publicly available Mma code for Maximize[], what are you talking about? And surely it runs into hundreds of lines, calling more blackboxes... | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:41 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : Those "crucial" differences have not been of any value to me, and I don't even know (or want to know) what WSL is. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:37 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis there are many crucial differences between Home and Pro Windows versions that you might not notice if you only use your machine as a glorified typewriter. E.g. one cannot use WSL. With that "hobby/home" Mma licence you cannot legally do academic work, namely "Work or research in which the product benefits your work" is forbidden. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:37 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : In your latest comment, you wrote: "the link to Maximize does not include any code, it's just a manual entry on how to call the function." -- In a previous comment (now apparently deleted), you mentioned something like "your code [that is, my code] for Maximize". My response was that such code is so short and straightforward that one can hardly call it code, and I included a link to a manual entry for Maximize[] showing how simple that "code" is and that it cannot possibly be of any instructive value. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 12:27 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : I don't know why you are saying that a home edition is crippled. I have used both workplace and home-use versions of Mathematica and seen no discernible difference. Similarly, between the Home and Professional/Enterprise versions of Windows. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 6:40 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis the link to Maximize does not include any code, it's just a manual entry on how to call the function. What it does is a black box; and indeed Maximizing a non-concave function with many local maxima on the domain is in principle messy thing involving precision considerations etc. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 6:36 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | I have no idea how crippled the home edition is. I quoted a UK price for non-academics. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 22:11 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : (i) I have checked Mathematica prices for Viet Nam and Venezuela; see store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/home-annual. They seem to be 335 USD for life or 170 USD annually (home edition, across the board, for all kinds of customers), hardly enough to buy 5-6 (or even one) decent computers. (ii) There is almost no such thing as code for Maximize[]; it's just a few straightforward lines (reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Maximize.html), which can be (I hope) easily implemented with any relevant software one has and likes. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 20:51 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis assuming one needs a full-blown, non-crippled version of Mathematica to run your code, we talk about £2300 license fee per year (for non-academics). This money buys 5-6 quite OK computers nowadays... | |
| May 19, 2019 at 18:51 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | Previous comment continued: (iii) The calculations done by such commands as Mathematica's Maximize[] are entirely algorithmic and routine, and it would probably take at least hundreds of pages to transcribe them into human language. Who would ever want to go through all such pages? On the other hand, the usage of Maximize[] is very straighforward and not at all instructive. So, readers who desire to check the Maximize[] output, can always do that using any other software that they have and like. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 18:42 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @TimothyChow : I understand that. However, a few points here are worth considering, I think: (i) To use any kind of sorfware, a person will have to have good enough access to a computer (and also to a journal), which may cost much more than a Mathematica license. Posting papers on arXiv may alleviate the concern about the journal, and I do try to post my papers on arXiv. (ii) The readers of my paper will, in most cases, have to go through the same painful process of learning and using the software. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 18:17 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @IosifPinelis: I think what people are trying to get you to see is the tradeoff between your time/money/effort and the time/money/effort of the consumer of your work (e.g., a mathematician in an underprivileged country who wants to understand your paper). Even if it's more work for you to use open source software, there's an argument that as a courtesy to consumers who do not have the resources that you have, you should invest that extra work to make life easier for them. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 15:01 | comment | added | François Brunault | @IosifPinelis Sure, except that some people have hardly any choice. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 14:13 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : As a mere user of software with limited time and money resources, I have to choose what software systems are worth acquiring, learning, and using -- based on some kind of "Usefulness-to-CostsOf(Acquiring+Learning+Using)" ratio. In my limited experience, this ratio was much higher for Mathematica concerning symbolic and numerical calculations. For other people, this may be different. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 14:03 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @FrançoisBrunault : I think we can agree that different people will make different choices, depending on their needs and preferences. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 10:04 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis - I am not saying that (ii) involves no "costs" - but these costs are akin to "costs" of learning/improving a body of knowledge (as opposed to (i), which at most produces a circle of closeted know-how) | |
| May 19, 2019 at 9:50 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @FrançoisBrunault - Magma has a lot of C code which is not open source. Also, Magma isn't as readily available as Mathematica (apparently due to being the weapon of choice of its largest customer, NSA...) | |
| May 19, 2019 at 7:58 | comment | added | François Brunault | @IosifPinelis The equivalence between time and money is true only for those people or institutions who can afford it. More fundamentally, we must consider how a given software helps spreading knowledge. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 6:11 | comment | added | François Brunault | @IosifPinelis I do number theory and my experience is opposite: OSS have far more possibilities than Mathematica e.g. elliptic curves, modular forms, $L$-functions, but there are plenty of other examples. I don't know about speed aspects however. The analogue of Mathematica in number theory is Magma, which is proprietary but the source code can be read and the documentation is very detailed and very convenient to browse (as opposed to my limited Mathematica experience), so at least we know what the software is doing. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 4:56 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : "it ought to run on a system that is available to everyone, otherwise it is basically a paywall situation." Again, I think one should try to compare two options: (i) to pay with money (which is, in the final analysis, time) for a Mathematica license (if one does not already have it, through their institution or otherwise) vs. (ii) to pay with time to try to learn and use in most cases more specialized, not very user-friendly, and possibly/probably less capable software. I think it is a mistake to assume that option (ii) involves no costs. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 3:17 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | Previous comment continued: Eventually I also found a long solution that can be verified by hand. As for your last question: No, I do not think are all the OSS are less efficient (than Mathematica) in what they can do. I think they tend to be more specialized and, based on my limited experience, seem to be less or much less efficient than Mathematica even in what they can do. Also, they seem to be hard to learn and use. I had much less difficulty learning and using Mathematica to more or less satisfy my needs. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 3:16 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @FrançoisBrunault : My experience with OSS alternatives to Mathematica has been very limited, but not happy. I tried to use a number of such alternatives, but was more or less able to use only Reduce and QEPCAD B, with much difficulty, and their performance was much inferior to that of Mathematica; I did that because referees and editors of the paper (projecteuclid.org/euclid.ejp/1457706456) requested that. | |
| May 19, 2019 at 2:40 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @TimothyChow : Thank you for your comment. This is good to know. | |
| May 18, 2019 at 20:25 | comment | added | François Brunault | @IosifPinelis I don't think that your point (ii) "spending time to learn and use a variety of specialized and oftentimes less powerful OSS" is accurate. For example, it is possible to use within Sage a variety of specialized softwares. Also, can you substantiate the claim that OSS are oftentimes less powerful than Mathematica? Do you mean that for a given problem, all the OSS are less efficient, or that most of them are? | |
| May 17, 2019 at 23:28 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @IosifPinelis : If you read through the comments here mathoverflow.net/a/316177/3106 you will see that docker is at least a partial solution to the problem of the operating system being abandoned. | |
| May 17, 2019 at 23:13 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @IosifPinelis if code is a part of a publication, it ought to run on a system that is available to everyone, otherwise it is basically a paywall situation. | |
| May 17, 2019 at 22:11 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : I don't see much relevance of the Elsevier/Springer/etc matter here. Also, in the event that Wolfram Inc stops Mathematica, there still will be a solution: to check the claims by using other software. However, I have rather seen cases when OSS gets abandoned. (As a practical matter, except for the developers, I think hardly anyone would ever check any part of the computer code itself, be it Mathematica or OSS). | |
| May 17, 2019 at 19:55 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | well, I have 0 objection to private use of Mathematica (or other Mmas) as long as you can get a verifiable without it result. | |
| May 17, 2019 at 19:51 | comment | added | Hao Chen | @DimaPasechnik I was a heavy user of Sage until recently, when I begin to work a lot with elliptic functions. I tried many OSS (pari/gp, mpmath, scipy etc.) and finally obtain a Mathematica license from my university. Although Mathematica also fails me, I must say that industrial softwares are very powerful in some aspects that OSS cannot compete with. This is very different from Elsevier vs OA. But on the other hand, I never publish anything that the reader would need Mathematica to verify, i.e. I never put my readers behind any paywall. | |
| May 17, 2019 at 19:26 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Todd Trimble | ||
| May 17, 2019 at 19:24 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | also, imagine for a moment Wolfram Inc stopping with Mathematica for some reason. then all this code would quickly become next to useless... just like texts written in ChiWriter... | |
| May 17, 2019 at 19:20 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | what is the balance of publishing in Elsevier journal, compared to publishing in a refereed arxiv.org-based journal? well, these without funds wont’t read you. Oh, but the Elsevier shareholders obviously would be happy... | |
| May 17, 2019 at 19:03 | comment | added | Iosif Pinelis | @DimaPasechnik : It is great that such open-source software (OSS) exists, at least because Mathematica has to compete with it. On the other hand, Mathematica is more universal and in most cases more powerful than the corresponding OSS. So, assuming that money is an expression of the expended time, what will be the balance between (i) paying for Mathematica and (ii) spending time to learn and use a variety of specialized and oftentimes less powerful OSS? | |
| May 17, 2019 at 18:40 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | I’d add that using open-source software is akin to publishing in an open access venue, while using e.g. Mathematica is akin to publishing something behind a permanent paywall. | |
| May 17, 2019 at 17:22 | history | answered | Timothy Chow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |