Discussion Topics

• SAGE-Maxima interface
• SAGE-GAP interface
• SAGE-Singular interface

• Discuss p-adic arithmetic overhaul

• Brainstorm about how a "SAGE Mathematics Foundation" would work.
  1. (David Joyner) News announcements (say to local/campus newspapers). I (=wdj) send out a GAP newsletter. It's a pain and sometimes I think a waste of time but a few people really appreciate it and think it is great. The Foundation could be responsible for such things. University administrators read the local/campus papers and it does not hurt to just inform people of what is going on, especially when it is of general interest.
  2. (David Joyner) I'm talking informally with various people about preinstalling SAGE on all (approx 1200) freshman PCs next year at the USNA. In this case, an official organization might be helpful. Also, it would be nice if a windows test suite was available (beyond the "sage -testall"). Something like a short list of tasks to check that the Notebook is working properly, for example. If a single person is installing, then sage-suport is fine. If a college or organization is installing or using SAGE for something, a Foundation might be more appropriate.
  3. (David Joyner) Funding for using SAGE in teaching could go through the SAGE foundation.

  4. I (=IftikharBurhanuddin) would like to see *more* developers involved in SAGE. We are currently understaffed and the thinking that a good chunk of users will contribute to the dev-SAGE is wishful. These people should ideally have good systems/hacking experience (not necessarily mathematicians/computer scientists) who will help dekink the kinks (in lesser time) than our amateurish efforts. The way this fits into the Sage Foundation is the question of funding for Sage.

  5. (David Joyner) The Foundation could produce videos of using SAGE to explore/teach such-and-such a topic. These could run the gamut from general ("SAGE in number theory") to specific ("Fourier series of periodic functions using SAGE").
     • (Yi Qiang) I think "screencast" tutorials would be extremely helpful for new SAGE users. Since we already have plenty of documentation, someone just needs to record themselves going through one of them.

  6. Some *senior* researchers who haven't done any computing since their student days want to learn SAGE for their teaching and research purposes. I (=IftikharBurhanuddin) have encountered such requests. The SAGE videos is a great idea but we should brainstorm about others ones keeping the target audience in mind.

     1. See my comment above.