Sage: Open Source Mathematical Software

Spring 2014 at the University of Washington

This is a course about SageMath, which is a software development project with the following mission:

Create a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab.

Information

• Course location: MWF at 12:30 in Johnson Hall 111 which is here
• Course website: https://github.com/williamstein/sage2014
• Professor: William Stein
• TA: Simon Spicer
• Office Hour for this course: Tuesdays 12:00-13:00 in Padelford C423
• TA Office Hours: Tuesdays 13:00-15:00 in Padelford C430
• Google Groups Course mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/sagemath2014
• UW course mailing list: Send email to math480b_sp14@uw.edu or view online at https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/private/math480b_sp14/.

Objectives

In this course you will:

• Learn how to use Sage, LaTeX, Python, and Cython
• Understand how Sage is constructed and how to change Sage
• Do a nontrivial project involving Sage
• Understand how to work with abstract mathematical objects in Sage (e.g., a "linear transformation", a group, ring or field, etc.)

Your Responsibilities

• Homework: (40% of grade) You will submit a homework assignment every week. No late homework will be accepted, and no low grades are dropped.
• Peer Grading: (20% of grade) You will have to grade (on time) a lot of other students' homework in this class, and projects. Peer grading will not be anonymous. (Drop the class now if you don't like this!)
• Project: (40% of grade) You will create a project, which will be (peer) graded in May and June.
• Presentation: You will give a few minutes presentation about your project at the end of the course.
• Attendance: You are expected to come to class.
• Grades: They will be at least as good as indicated by the following grading scale (I will likely curve it down): [(98, 4), (96.5, 3.9), (95, 3.8), (93.5, 3.7), (92, 3.6), (90.5, 3.5), (89, 3.4), (87.5, 3.3), (86, 3.2), (84.5, 3.1), (83, 3.0), (81.5, 2.9), (80, 2.8), (78.5, 2.7), (77, 2.6), (75.5, 2.5), (74, 2.4), (72.5, 2.3), (71, 2.2), (69.5, 2.1), (68, 2.0), (66.5, 1.9), (65, 1.8), (63.5, 1.7), (62, 1.6), (60.5, 1.5), (59, 1.4), (57.5, 1.3), (56, 1.2), (54.5, 1.1), (53.0, 1.0), (51.5, 0.9), (50.1, 0.8), (50.0,0.7), (0, 0)]

Assignment Schedule

Homework and peer grading of homework is due every Friday by 6pm, and homework will be assigned on Friday, so you have 1 week to do each assignment. The last week of classes will consist of project presentations. There is no in-class midterm or final exam.

• Wednesday, April 2 -- create a project at https://cloud.sagemath.com and email the project_id to sagemath480@gmail.com
• Friday, April 4 -- Homework 1 due by 6pm -- in a folder "homework1" of your project.
• Friday, April 11 -- Homework 2 due; peer grading of homework 1 due
• Friday, April 18 -- Homework 3 due; peer grading of homework 2 due
• Friday, April 25 -- Homework 4 due; peer grading of homework 3 due
• Friday, May 2 -- Homework 5 due; peer grading of homework 4 due
• Friday, May 9 -- Homework 6 due; peer grading of homework 5 due; first draft of project due
• Friday, May 16 -- Homework 7 due; peer grading of homework 6 due; peer grading of project due
• Friday, May 23 -- Homework 8 due; peer grading of homework 7 due
• (Monday, May 26 is Memorial Day is memorial day)
• Monday, June 2 at 6am -- Homework 9 due; final draft of project due; peer grading of homework 8 due
• June 2,4,6 -- Project presentations
• Friday, June 6 at 6pm -- Peer grading of homework 9 and peer grading of projects due