Wolfram Mathematica - 2012-06-20

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2:10 AM

Argentinian majority in the chat room

2:34 AM

@Heike, link?

3:09 AM

@Rojo at my grad school, there were a large number of numerical relativists all from Argentina (and cousins of sorts). My friend referred to them as the Argentinian mafia! :)

lol

3:24 AM

@rcollyer There are a few good theoretical guys from here

err .. theorists ?

whatever

@belisarius there's always the antiquated, but still nice: theoreticians.

@rcollyer Hmmm sounds odd to me ... but take for granted that my ears are not those of an Englishman

4 hours later…

7:47 AM

@halirutan No, no, I meant Instead of "At night it is really shorter than through the wood" "Nachts ist es wircklich kurtzer als durch Wald" Or some such (My German is a bit rusty after 8 years of neglect). These word plays are usually better in their original language:=)

5 hours later…

Sjoerd C. de Vries

12:52 PM

7 questions until we hit 2000...

1 hour later…

1:56 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries now it's just 5

we should overtake the number of Mathematica questions on SO soon too.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

I should be studying right now. I guess I'm addicted.

@SjoerdCdeVries Are you studying for the finance course you were doing?

I would like to say that the addiction diminishes a bit once you hit 10000, but that's not true actually.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Heike Yes, I try to do that every Wednesday. I'm working at home then.

@SjoerdCdeVries It's nice that your boss allows you to do that. I know people who are expected to study in their own time.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

2:12 PM

@Heike It's 50/50. I work 36 hrs/week, so I'm off duty Wednesday afternoon

2:22 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries I used to watch cartoons on wednesday afternoons when I was still in primary school.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Heike I've been home 1 day/week as long as I had kids. It's less necessary nowadays, but they like it.

2:40 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries A lot of my male friends work part time, even those without children. It seems much more than when I was young.

(Short segue: Sometimes, I get the feeling that people are a tad too enamored with functional programming...)

@JM Do you have an example?

That last question I answered, along with OP's previous question on Cholesky decomposition.

(...and this isn't the first time I've seen people like this.)

It's the funniest thing about quite a number of linear algebra algorithms; somehow they look neater as procedural routines than as functional routines.

@JM The one on eigenvalues? I agree that in some cases it's better to use loops. I remember there was a question about this once.

They're almost always the types that will read a +500 answer on SO that speaks highly of Haskell and F# and now wants to know how to make lasagna using Fold

2:56 PM

@Heike Yes, that.

@JM On the other hand, I think it's quite nice that the OP is trying to improve his/hers functional programming skills. It probably takes some experience to recognise which problems are more fit for a procedural approach.

"some experience" - heh. The same experience needed for you to be able to say if your code looks neat or lousy, I think. :)

Ok, a lot of experience. I'm pretty sure an experienced c programmer would shudder when he/she sees my c code.

2 hours later…

5:36 PM

hello

Alo

holá

Hum

Hi1

Aloha

Is depressed the opposite of released? (context: buttons)

I would have thought to say "pressed"

Depressed can't mean the same as released, and I don't think it refers to the button's psychological state

5:42 PM

@Rojo Post the question in Psychology.SE

button is pressed

or depressed

5:53 PM

@belisarius, haha

EventHandler[ Graphics[], {"MouseDown" :> Print["h"]}, PassEventsDown -> True]

Anyone knows why for every click I get two prints?

Why the FE bounced the event back up, and how to avoid

I want to still be able to use controls inside, so PassEventsDown->Automatic is not ideal. E.g EventHandler[{Dynamic@x, Slider[Dynamic[x]]},{"MouseDown" :> Print["h"]}, PassEventsDown -> Automatic]

@Rojo Are you sure?

i = 0; EventHandler[Graphics[], {"MouseDown" :> Print[i++]},
PassEventsDown -> True]

@belisarius I'm getting 2 prints and 2 increments every click

You get one?

yes, I get one

:/

I was hoping there was a stupid fix

@JM I suppose a lot of commonly encountered algorithms are only "pretend-iterative", i.e. they tend to be cast in an iterative way in procedural languages but are not inherently iterative by nature. I can understand why, seeing how much more clearly these can often be restated in functional languages, people might tentatively get the idea that the functional approach is usually (or always) clearer. Of course, when it comes to truly iterative algorithms, a more imperative/procedural

6:08 PM

@Rojo Option-> "Humanize mouse events"

Haha

Anyway, if I put PassEventsDown->Automatic I get one

so perhaps it's some FE option

@JM approach comes into its own. Were it otherwise, for linear algebra in particular, I suppose BLAS/LAPACK would have been written in Lisp rather than Fortran.

or default graphics option

@Rojo Option->HumanizeMouseEvents

It's the MouseDown

MouseClicked works once

MouseUp once too

so I guess I "depress" my button twice as much as I release it

6:12 PM

Depression is a two way road

That's why my mice (I love that word) keep throwing themselves off the window

Cats be there

What OS?

W7x64 here

winxp

Museumware

I'll wait for a couple of helpful chat souls to tell me their experience

with the issue

6:15 PM

@Rojo I get the same result on Win2003 x64, for what it's worth (just to round out the possible choices of Windows OSes). As for why this occurs, I don't know.

Oh

So, so far it would seem the clicks are depressed once every 32bits of the OS

only with PassEventsDown->True

Obvious conclusion

@Rojo In Mathematica 7 I get one printout per click. Odd.

@OleksandrR You have 8.0.4 ?

@Rojo Yes, I have 8.0.4 and 7.0.1 (and 5.2)

Then maybe this "feature" was introduced in the minor releases after 8.0.0

because @belisarius, you use 8.0.0, rigth?

gth

6:21 PM

FWIW I get the same result in 32-bit 8.0.4 as 64-bit.

I wanna downgrade

good news everyone

I've started design brainstorming for Mathematica.se site

yes the site will graduate soon.

11

(I'm the designer at Stack Exchange btw)

5

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Jin Very good news indeed.

@Jin Oh? That is good news! Thanks! I'm sure everyone here will be very happy to contribute ideas and feedback on your designs if you need it (all the other sites look great, by the way).

@OleksandrR thanks! Since I really know nothing about Mathematica, I'll go ahead create a brainstorming post on Meta, to gather some feed back.

i am aware of

16

Q: What should our site design look like?

As we are approaching 90 days, it is time to get us back to answering the 7 Essential Questions. In terms of site design, we ultimately need to consider a number minutiae such as logo, the top banner, the look of our badges, the color scheme used, etc. As this is a large topic, this question sho...

discussion 7-questions

user image

i like that shape, if it was more cell-shaded/flat rather than gradient.

user image

that looks nice too, but i wonder how it'd work out in smaller sizes.

6:29 PM

@Jin Some community promotion ads were made which are now doing the rounds:

11

Q: What would be a good community promotion ad?

One way we can promote this site is to create a community promotion ad to be shown on other SE sites. Each graduated SE site has a meta question where people can submit these ads (math, physics, stats), and if they receive enough upvotes they will be automatically shown by the system. If we are ...

discussion site-promotion

Oh, the first one is mine :)

By the way, I just emailed support because of the EventHandler issue

Sjoerd C. de Vries

Perhaps look at this Mathematica Gallery for some inspiration

I'm curious if our logo ends up resembling too much of the official Mathematica logo, there'd be legal issues?

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Szabolcs @verbeia @MrWizard @JM @RM @rcollyer @belisarius @brettChampion Have we got news for you...

@SjoerdCdeVries hi

Sjoerd C. de Vries

6:32 PM

@belisarius seems we're about to graduate

@Jin the cumulated icosahedron ("spikey") is the logo of Mathematica, but I don't think it's possible to trademark a geometric shape, so I think the legal issues would be no more troublesome than, say, using the name of Mathematica, which doesn't seem to be a problem. But, I'm not a copyright lawyer, so don't take my word for that.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Jin Well, the official logo is a mathematical shape that is known for centuries. It has appeared in various shapes and color schemes. We can do that too.

user image

But I'm not married to that shape.

@OleksandrR I'm definitely a fan of the shape and the overall aesthetic of the official logo. For our site use, besides in the header part of the site, the logo will be used for favicon(16 x 16px) 48x48px icon, apple touch, and other print materials

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@heike graduation is nearing

@SjoerdCdeVries i like that shape, however I think we should have a different shape. so people don't think we're just re-coloring the official logo and calling it our own

6:35 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries Nice.

it could be the same concept, but with fewer/more vertices?

also, is it possible for Mathemtica to generate vector file format? e.g. eps.

@SjoerdCdeVries Where do that wonderful news come from?

@Jin Yes, that's very much possible. If you're interested in Mathematica's overall aesthetic, you can have a look at the web-based version of the full documentation for the product. It looks identical on the web as in Mathematica itself.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@belisarius see above

@OleksandrR great, thanks!

6:38 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries I did, but can't find it

I'll spend the next few days researching on the topic. don't be surprised if I'm here often in chat pestering you guys with questions :)

@belisarius Mathmetica.se is graduating

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@belisarius I've starred it now for your convenience

user image

This is the icon I use for our twitter feed

@SjoerdCdeVries Do we have a twitter feed?

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Heike I set up a robot to twitter our rss feed

@SjoerdCdeVries I didn't know that.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

6:42 PM

@leonidshifrin Have we got news for you...

@Heike twitter name is MathematicaAtSE

@SjoerdCdeVries Thanks.

@SjoerdCdeVries Just in case, do you know if all the statistics prior to graduation will be available later? Comparing both states will be nice!

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@belisarius You mean rep ans votes?

@Jin How can we help you in the meantime?

@SjoerdCdeVries Not only that. The necessary figures to build the "avid users", "new users per week", "users who visited only once", etc

@Jin Wolfram|Alpha uses a slightly different polyhedron. I think the exact shape doesn't matter; all similar shapes are recognizably Mathematica related, and the color can be anything. Mathematica 9 is going to be released in the autumn, but nobody knows what color or exact shape its logo is going to have yet, as far as I know.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

6:50 PM

@belisarius I don't know, but I guess the change will be mainly visual, and also will change some required rep thresholds

@yoda Check the chat, please

@SjoerdCdeVries I'd better get to 10K soon :)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@belisarius I'm working on it.

But am more tied up in work than half a year ago.

@OleksandrR how do you know about MMA 9?

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@acl Seen the news?

Icos:

user image

Sjoerd C. de Vries

6:55 PM

@OleksandrR What about a page of beautifully set mathematical equations, or is that too nerdy?

user image

@OleksandrR Wasn't the alpha logo is a space filling polyhedron?

user image

user image

@Rojo Just rumours. I don't know what the release date actually is, but some time in the autumn sounds plausible.

All those from here bulatov.org

7:00 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries That would be alright with me, although I think it would be hard to make it obviously Mathematica- (as opposed to mathematics-) related, and the requirement for different sizes might be difficult to fulfil with something having as much detail as a page of equations.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

Old version 5 had a nice graphics gallery in the documentation. A bit outdated, but might give some inspiration too.

reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v5/Demos/GraphicsGallery

thanks for the links, i'll be looking at them this week, and proposal an overall site design sometimes next week

@SjoerdCdeVries I didn't realise how much the rendering of 3D graphics has improved since version 5

@Heike they lose a lot by being converted to palletized GIFs, I think.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Heike It was actually pretty bad. My recollection was totally different

7:04 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries It's a bit like watching films from the 80s.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@OleksandrR Probably true. I remember the graphics on the high gloss paper

I was amazed at the time

@Heike

user image

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Heike or movies with car scenes with background projection

@SjoerdCdeVries Those are pretty bad as well.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

Never noticed it at the time, but it's a complete turnoff now

7:07 PM

@belisarius Which film is that?

Sjoerd C. de Vries

King kong?

@Heike Though it can be used to great effect too. The Matrix has one scene where they were using it on purpose, to show the matrix world as artificial

@SjoerdCdeVries actually, I just found them in the version 5.2 documentation. They're palletized GIFs there too, and presented without the code to generate them. On the other hand the code for the version 5.2 spikey is there and the result (as a 3-d vector graphic) looks fine in the old renderer.

@belisarius Oh, I should have clicked

I was thinking of the seven adventures of sinbad but I couldn't remember seeing a Gorilla in that one.

@Heike sensitiveskinmagazine.com/japanese-giant-monster-movies

This must be the greatest number of people in this chat at once, not counting the private beta.

7:12 PM

@MrWizard Please define "people"

@SjoerdCdeVries I can't remember that scene. Maybe I should watch it again soon.

@belisarius do you imply these aren't?

@MrWizard As you know, I don't like to jump to conclusions

lol

lpl.arizona.edu/~bcohen/phantom_tollbooth/conclusions.html

user image

7:15 PM

@belisarius You sound like a Mathematician

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@jin browsing around this site should give you a bit an impression of the current look-and-feel of Mathematica

It is a fine day and I'm going outside, because I can. Y'all have fun designing the style.

@Heike Almost

quotefully.com/movie/The+Phantom+Tollbooth/The+MathemaGician

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Heike I watch it once every year. This is the scene:

user image

@SjoerdCdeVries @Jin That's probably a better option than looking through the documentation, in fact. The examples there are clearly designed for visual impact rather than for didactic purposes.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

7:20 PM

Neo is back in the matrix first time after being extracted

@MrWizard outside? what is that?

2

@SjoerdCdeVries I'll look out for it.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

Mr.wizard is also on the great outdoors stackexchange site. He must be referring to that. ;-)

@Jin That remark reminds me of this:

user image

Hi all, can any of you please say something clever about why the locator crosshair disappears in the following example?

pos = {.5, .5};
Graphics[Inset[
LocatorPane[Dynamic@pos,
Graphics[{Gray, Circle[]}, ImageSize -> 100, Background -> White],
AutoAction -> True],
{.5, .5},
Background -> Yellow, Alignment -> Center
], Background -> GrayLevel@.9, ImageSize -> 120,
PlotLabel -> Dynamic@pos]

And just to add to the outdoors conversation: in England, there is no sun at all. It helps to raise the per-capita ratio of programmers in the population.

7:37 PM

@IstvánZachar And during the rare occasions there is sun, there's a hosepipe ban to keep people indoors anyway.

@Heike hahaha!

or some deadline work that prevents people to enjoy life : )

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@IstvánZachar Well, I see your problem. Not sure what's causing it. But stacking an locator pane in an Inset in a Graphic sounds like a recipe for difficulties

Sure, but I do not want to put Locators or EventHandlers into the Graphic, as I then have to add all the functionality of the LocatorPane as well to it

@IstvánZachar You could set Appearance->None and add Locator[Dynamic[pt]] to the list of Graphics primitives in LocatorPane.

7:54 PM

@Heike: I've tried that already, but then I have to again dynamically uodate pt, which seems to interfere with something (in the full code)

I might be able to make it work, but I would like to know why the Inset causes the disappearance of the crosshair

8:23 PM

Fantastic news! And we have just had a run of new questions - the daily average has picked up. Someone asked if we will still be able to track stats. The graphs in this question will still update.

Great news indeed!

But the ones from the A51 page will need to be gotten another way. Number of users is fine. Number of avid users is doable but I can no longer commit to tracking it daily. Traffic and number of questions in total can be gotten from the StackExchange list.

Which is here: stackexchange.com/sites#traffic

1999 questions!

8:48 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries yep!

@Heike would have been funnier had it been less accurate...

Sjoerd C. de Vries

9:08 PM

@LeonidShifrin Nice speed up, though I hate to leave Mathematica to work in a language that I don't know.

Somebody should write a homework-like pun question for Q Nbr 2K

Like "In how many ways could you sum up 2K using the roots of unit of order 2K?"

@SjoerdCdeVries Thanks. My point is that Java is really not hard to use at all, particularly when you don't use OO much (which becomes more relevant for truly huge projects). It is fairly similar to C/C++ in syntax, and in many ways easier to use (although, I am a much bigger fan of C than Java). On top of that, JLink is really an exceptional technology, it simplifies life tremendously.

@Sjoerd I just think we were really missing a final few links in this chain, and my reloader is a first approximation to that. Once you know that you don't have to separately invoke the compiler etc but can compile Java classes directly from Mathematica, it becomes much easier psychologically to use it

Sjoerd C. de Vries

9:24 PM

@LeonidShifrin The process was painless indeed, and I can confirm a factor of 100 speedup.

@LeonidShifrin BTW why Re-loader?

@SjoerdCdeVries This is just a top of an iceberg, I am going to bring more examples soon . The peg solitaire is ready, and few others are in line :)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

I guess I have to take the Java dive some time...

@SjoerdCdeVries Because it reloads newly compiled class. Right now I do that by a barbarian method of killing entire JVM. I hope to have a better solution to that in some future. The problem is that it is not so easy to unload the class from JVM. So, if you re-compile it, JVM will normally still use the old version. To force it to reload, you have to make special classloaders, which will go the way of the dodo as well as all classes it loads.

@SjoerdCdeVries There are existing powerful tools to do this, like JRebel. JRebel is free for non-commercial use, so I am thinking of linking the reloader to it.

@SjoerdCdeVries You won't regret it, although beware that Java is pretty verbose (which is a big sin). I like it for practical reasons, but dislike it from the point of view of language design. But we may start from it and then use also Scala and / or Clojure, which must be much more pleasant to code in.

9:50 PM

Have to go now. See you, @Sjoerd!

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@LeonidShifrin Ishould sign of too. Good night!

10:34 PM

@Jin It might be good if we had a color palette more like the version of this logo that was used in the community promotion ad - it seems it was the one that everyone liked the best out of all the different varieties.

By the way, if anyone is active on TeX, I just added the Mathematica ad to their list of community promotion ads. Please upvote if possible.

11:05 PM

@Verbeia Evenso I am not that active, admittedly more consumer, I have upvoted the promotion ad.

11:54 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries awesome! I guess we passed the review. :)

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Jun '1220

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