From: William Morgan <wmorgan-ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2005-07-08T03:53:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby as mathematical language

Excerpts from none's mail of  7 Jul 2005 (EDT):
> Regarding Narray, it seems kind of cool, but lacking in real
> mathematical sophistication.  I think it would be better to extend
> rb-gsl to make composing matrices easier and thus keep the excellent
> linear algebra facilities.  Really, I think Narray and rb-gsl have a
> lot of redundancy and I really don't like bouncing between the two of
> them.

If it's a matter of adding matrix composition capabilities, you probably
want add that to the GSL. Presumably Ruby would be the wrong place to
put the computationally intensive aspect of your operations.

> Regarding graphics, matplotlib for python rocks, I wonder if it can be
> ported....

There is mrplot in Ruby, which I haven't used, but the screenshots look
very decent: http://rubyforge.org/projects/mrplot/.

> The basics are all around, the problem is designing an intuitive one
> stop shop that is really usable.  Being able to hack something out of
> gnuplot is not the same as having a well put together
> framework/library....

As someone who uses the living hell that is R on a regular basis (though
not for any kind of linear algebra), I would give my left nut to be able
to use Ruby in its stead. But as Steve Jenkins pointed out, the real
value in Octave and R is the huge libraries behind them, not the
languages themselves.

Still, you've got to start somewhere. I'm very interested in this as
well.

-- 
William <wmorgan-ruby-talk@masanjin.net>