January 31, 2016

SymPy With Aaron Meurer

1 hour 3 minutes

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Summary

Looking for an open source alternative to Mathematica or MatLab for solving algebraic equations? Look no further than the excellent SymPy project. It is a well built and easy to use Computer Algebra System (CAS) and in this episode we spoke with the current project maintainer Aaron Meurer about its capabilities and when you might want to use it.

Brief Introduction

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We are recording today on January 18th, 2016 and your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti

Today we are interviewing Aaron Meurer about SymPy

Interview with Aaron Meurer

Introductions

How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris

What is Sympy and what kinds of problems does it aim to solve? – Chris

How did the SymPy project get started? – Tobias

How did you get started with the SymPy project? – Chris

Are there any limits to the complexity of the equations SymPy can model and solve? – Chris

How does SymPy compare to similar projects in other languages? – Tobias

How does Sympy render results using such beautiful mathematical symbols when the inputs are simple ASCII? – Chris

What are some of the challenges in creating documentation for a project like SymPy that is accessible to non-experts while still having the necessary information for professionals in the fields of mathematics? – Tobias

Which fields of academia and business seem to be most heavily represented in the users of SymPy? – Tobias

What are some of the uses of Sympy in education outside of the obvious like students checking their homework? – Chris

How does SymPy integrate with the Jupyter Notebook? – Chris

Is SymPy generally used more as an interactive mathematics environment or as a library integrated within a larger application? – Tobias

What were the challenges moving SymPy from Python 2 to Python 3? – Chris

Are there features of Python 3 that simplify your work on SymPy or that make it possible to add new features that would have been too difficult previously? – Tobias

Were there any performance bottlenecks you needed to overcome in creating Sympy? – Chris

What are some of the interesting design or implementation challenges you’ve found when creating and maintaining SymPy? – Chris

Are there any new features or major updates to SymPy that are planned? – Tobias

How is the evolution of SymPy managed from a feature perspective? Have there been any occasions in recent memory where a pull request had to be rejected because it didn’t fit with the vision for the project? – Tobias

Which of the features of SymPy do you find yourself using most often? – Tobias

Picks

Tobias

Functional Geekery

Nekrogoblikon

Heavy Meta

Marble Fun Run

Chris

Surprisingly Awesome

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Pizzicato 5

Mayflower Hoppy Brown Ale

Aaron

Fermat’s Library

catimg

iTerm2

Keep In Touch

Twitter

Mailing List

Gitter Channel

Links

Project Euler

Richardson’s Theorem

Doing Math With Python by Amit Saha (and Aaron’s book review)

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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By Tobias Macey

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