Wolfram Mathematica

4:00 PM

@Szabolcs I don't know if that learns either... It probably just uses a prior based on the function you're trying to complete inside

For example, inside a Graphics, Re... might suggest Rectangle first, whereas inside plotting functions, it might suggest RegionFunction

Szabolcs

@rm-rf It does learn. It was mentioned in the presentation on Monday. Take a look at ~/Library/SystemFiles/FrontEnd/SystemResources/FunctionalFrequency

Leonid Shifrin

@rm-rf You can see the the definite integral is correct simply from dimensional arguments. dx~ k, and the denominator ~ (x^2)^-(p/2)=p, so the integral should be ~k^(1-p)

rm -rf

@Szabolcs Interesting... I'm sure that the predictive interface doesn't learn though, because Arnoud liked P. Fonseca's suggestion on active learning and said it'll probably be looked into in future

Szabolcs

@rm-rf I'm not sure I remember right, but I think they said that they can remotely update the rules for the suggestions bar, so you don't have to wait for a new release for improved suggestions

rm -rf

@Szabolcs but that's different from active learning.

You can get 4chan to type "plot monkeys dancing" a million times into W|A and soon you'll be getting a prediction for monkey dances when you plot sin(x) :D

Szabolcs

4:05 PM

@rm-rf Yes, that's different. I didn't pay full attention during the presentation so I was not sure.

Leonid Shifrin

Ok, folks, must go now. Perhaps will stop by later today.

See you all later, then!

Szabolcs

Good night @Leonid! I think I'll report that formatting problem (reproduced from scratch, not based on your package)

rm -rf

bye @LeonidShifrin

Leonid Shifrin

@Szabolcs It would be nice if you could report it in this way, yes. See you later!

bye @rm-rf

Szabolcs

4:31 PM

@Leonid If I forgot to use OOBlock, how do I remove symbols that are no longer referenced? Am I stuck with them until the end of the kernel session?

Hi @Mr.Wizard

Mr.Wizard

Hi @Szabolcs !

Szabolcs

Do you have v9 now?

Mr.Wizard

Not yet...

By the way, I don't believe I've asked yet: how is married life? :D

Szabolcs

Good :) not that different from before, actually. The big change is adjusting to the U.S.

rm -rf

I feel like this is a dupe, but I need to run

Mr.Wizard

4:38 PM

(I was off checking your profile). Did you know you're "Being ignored by 1 user"? His loss...

@rm-rf okay I'll look at it

Szabolcs

@Mr.Wizard I did not know that ... I really hope I did not offend anyone.

rm -rf

@Mr.Wizard I'm sure that's from the huge math chat room fiasco when Szabolcs and a few others were promoting mma.se's A51 proposal.

Things got... very ugly. I can't say much more right now.

Szabolcs

Only mods can see the ignores?

Mr.Wizard

Funny, I missed that entirely. You never seem to miss anything.

rm -rf

@Szabolcs If you can't see it, then probably yes.

Mr.Wizard

4:41 PM

@Szabolcs I can't see who, just that line which I quoted.

rm -rf

@Mr.Wizard well, you weren't all that enthusiastic about this site until about the first week or so :)

Mr.Wizard

That's true. Actually I was out of town a bit before the launch, so I could have missed a lot of things.

Szabolcs

aaah ... poopy bird on my shoulder :(

Mr.Wizard

What?!

Like this?

Mark McClure

What, exactly, is "community wiki"?

How can I find community wiki posts?

Szabolcs

4:46 PM

Just like that :) except those pirates never mention the bird droppings! I put it back in the cage and cleaned off my shirt ... It's throwing a hissy fit now because it wants to come out and play.

My wife got a bird about a week ago.

Mark McClure

Ahh... Sorry to interrupt. :)

Szabolcs

298

Q: What are "Community Wiki" posts?

Some questions and answers are marked Community Wiki and are owned by a Community Wiki user. Why have Community Wiki posts? How do Community Wiki posts work? How does a post become a Community Wiki post? How can the Community Wiki status be removed from a post? Return to FAQ Index

Mr.Wizard

@Szabolcs What kind?

Mark McClure

Yes, I actually read that, but where is wiki?

Mr.Wizard

141

Q: Where can I find examples of good Mathematica programming practice?

I consider myself a pretty good Mathematica programmer, but I'm always looking out for ways to either improve my way of doing things in Mathematica, or to see if there's something nifty that I haven't encountered yet. Where (books, websites, etc.) do I look for examples of good (best?) practices ...

reference-request programming

Look at each of the posts....

Szabolcs

4:49 PM

@Mr.Wizard Cockatiel. Very sociable, apparently. Always wants to come out of the cage, but once it does, it will never leave people. It only likes to sit on shoulders, nowhere else.

Mark McClure

Hmm... So that's one community wiki post. Wiki, I would guess, implies a central location. There doesn't even seem to be a wiki tag.

Szabolcs

@MarkMcClure Any post can be made a community wiki. I believe in the past you could mark question as community wiki when you asked them, but now you can only mark answers, not questions.

Mr.Wizard

@Szabolcs Probably a hand-fed one. Be aware that if you get it a mate it will largely ignore you after that. :^)

Mark McClure

OK, my brother in law has two birds. I don't like to go there.

Szabolcs

If a post gets edited a lot, it automatically becomes community wiki, which in short means that it doesn't give reputation and that (almost) anyone can edit without the edit needing to be reviewed first.

Mr.Wizard

4:51 PM

@MarkMcClure Did you get dive-bombed?

Mark McClure

No, they're mostly caged. It's the smell.

Szabolcs

This one is pretty much smell-free. (Unless you smell it from close.)

Mark McClure

On the wiki thing, I should have been more specific with my original question. I understand basically what the wiki is, how questions become wiki and why it's good to have a wiki. What I don't understand is how wiki is organized.

Leonid Shifrin

Stopping by just for a second, was pinged by @Szabolcs

Szabolcs

@LeonidShifrin You should be sleeping and have your computer turned off :P I thought you'd get the ping tomorrow only.

I have a hard time reproducing the formatting issue, but I'm still trying.

Mark McClure

4:54 PM

It seems to me that there should be at least a wiki tag that returns all the community wiki posts. Better yet, a wiki!

Szabolcs

@MarkMcClure I just found this

Leonid Shifrin

@Szabolcs Well, it is not that later here yet - about 9 p.m.only. I did not yet add a Delete method yet, but for the time being you can simply Remove those objects: they are just symbols carrying some rules (mostly UpValues)

Szabolcs

mathematica.stackexchange.com/search?q=wiki%3A1

Mark McClure

@Szabolcs Awesome - thanks!

Szabolcs

@LeonidShifrin I really wish Mathematica had a removal hook for easier cleanup of removed objects. It would be especially useful when extending it using another language (Java, C++, etc.). Currently if I create my own data type in C, I need to provide an explicit way to destroy objects, or use something like JavaBlock. Even TetGenLink has TetGenDelete

I did find some undocumented functions that got called on symbol removal, but they only worked with explicit Remove, not when Temporary symbols got removed automatically

Leonid Shifrin

5:00 PM

@Szabolcs You can redefine Remove via InheritedBlock, for one thing, to add a hook

@Szabolcs Oh, I see

Szabolcs

@LeonidShifrin There is already a hook, see Internal`Handlers[]

but it doesn't work or automatic removals

since not even JLink implements automatic object cleanup, I don't think there is any (undocumented) way

Leonid Shifrin

@Szabolcs Well, one solution I am thinking about is to run the code with a general eval function - this is what I intend to introduce later for the code being exchanged. This has a ton of advantages. In particular, people may introduce local redefinitions of main scoping constructs (I did it once for Module for my own purposes)

Szabolcs

I'm just not comfortable enough to make very low level modifications like this ... I'm always worried about introducing very difficult to find problems ...

(even if the modification is local to an enviroment)

Leonid Shifrin

@Szabolcs Yes, I have the same feeling too. However, there is another way. If the run-time system / project loader supports true macros, then one can construct something which may look like Module (e.g.), but expand into some different code. And that will only work for the part of code, so no danger of changing some other's code (so, macros in that sense are like lexical scoping).

@Szabolcs I came to a conclusion that, if we have a certain set of rules for code exchange, we can implement such run-time evaluator, and it will solve a ton of problems, because it will provide hooks we currently miss, and for other reasons as well.

halirutan

5:18 PM

1+

sorry..

Stack Exchange

Blog - Stack Exchange: Stack Overflow localizes Careers 2.0 in German

Bethany Marzewski on December 12, 2012

After months of work from our dev team, last week marked the official launch of our first localized site with Careers 2.0 in German. We celebrated the occasion in style on December 5 with a blow-out party at Betahaus in Berlin complete with product demos, free food, free t-shirts, oh, and German beer of course.

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Germans are the largest non-English-speaking group of Stack Overflow users in Europe To date, visitors from Germa …

acl

5:36 PM

@Szabolcs have you set it to beep?

the last checkbox?

@Szabolcs at least it's alive, unlike another parrot I could mention...

Mr.Wizard

6:47 PM

@rm-rf I couldn't find an exact match to that question. If anyone else has better luck (or skill) in finding a duplicate please flag it.

Szabolcs

7:04 PM

Checking the Java version, for people who don't know Java (like me):

LoadJavaClass["java.lang.System"]; getProperty["java.version"]

Steven

7:44 PM

Hello there.

sjoerd: Thanks for the comment on my question. I eventually found AccountingForm which gives me good output.

Anyone here who could help out with mathematica performance tuning?

magma

9:26 PM

General question on StackExchange: I lost 10 points rep today because "a user was removed" (this was mathematics.SE). I question the logic of this. I still worked to give a good answer, it is not my fault that the user was later removed. Anyway, I cannot even

find out who was the user and what was the question. Is this a correct procedure?

I send the above to @Szabolcs, but I appreciate any comment /help from everybody

Steven

This may sound snarky. But do you care that much about your rep?

Though I agree, It'd be nice if you could know why you lost it.

magma

@Steven First: I always care about principles| Don't you? Second: Rep in math.SE is much more difficult to get. You may write a nice , long answer and you are lucky if you get 1 or 2 upvotes. Third: afaik this could be a computer error, since I have (apparently) no way to verify this

Steven

10:12 PM

I care about principles, yes. But I realize some people don't. So I pick my battles. The second point I fully understand.

Nasser M. Abbasi

10:27 PM

@magma, if it makes you feel better, I had 85 points taken away because a question I answered was deleted :) In the scheme of life, these virtual points in the cloud mean nothing really (to me). I like usenet newsgroups more for technical discussion, because they do not have this voting system and hence feel more open and relaxed. But usenet newsgroups are dying, being replaced by forums like this and others. So we are stuck with this system until something better comes along.

acl

@NasserM.Abbasi if you find the mathgroup open and relaxed, I suggest you become a crisis negotiator :)

Eric Brown

@acl lol

acl

Seriously though, I found the mathgroup a very unpleasant place so I guess "we are stuck with this system" sounds strange. But maybe I am too sensitive.

Nasser M. Abbasi

@acl, but mathgroup is also moderated. I meant usenet newsgroup that are open and not moderated, like Matlab's, Java, etc.. and hundreds others like them.

acl

@NasserM.Abbasi Well I still found it unpleasant. Tastes

Eric Brown

10:32 PM

@acl i'm afraid to post there. It's downright hostile

Nasser M. Abbasi

I mean, I do not like forums with voting up/down build into them. This aspect of it only. Other than that, I like I can edit my posts, paste stuff, etc... much better than usenet.

Mike Honeychurch

I haven't been to mathgroup since this site got up and running. What do you guys find hostile about it?

Eric Brown

i think it's difficult to ask "newbie" questions

acl

@MikeHoneychurch Do you want names? :)

(I'm joking)

Mike Honeychurch

that surprises me. there always seemed to be a bunch of usual suspects there to answer most questions

is this something that has changed in the past year? like i said haven't been to mathgroup in a year but never noticed problems before.

acl

10:36 PM

@EricBrown I don't think so actually. You are likely to get a dismissive answer, but you probably will get at least one dismissive answer independently of the level of the question, so...

Nasser M. Abbasi

only problem with mathgroup is that it is SLOW. takes 2 days sometimes to get an answer. Compred with 2 minutes here :)

Mike Honeychurch

agree about the slowness. it is a moderated site whereas here it is immediate

Steven

Nasser: That is a good point about this place. I've had to ask a few "newbie" questions. But usually, the small newbie questions are the most frustrating.

Nasser M. Abbasi

if mathgroup was not moderated, it would have been much useful to the community

Eric Brown

@acl well, sort of what I meant. and there is the barrier to posting caused by moderation

i do miss jens kuska's posts. gruff, but right on

Mike Honeychurch

10:41 PM

@EricBrown yes they had a certain tone but always spot on

acl

yes they were gruff, not pompous

there's a difference

(obviously :) )