Thanks for this, Ashley. Two small tips: 1) single quotation marks are only for a quotation within a quotation. You should (usually) only use quotation marks when you're quoting someone. If you're using them to distance yourself from the words, ask yourself if you could use different words (and drop the quotation marks); 2) Avoid using passive voice (i.e. "the 'Seeing Yourself as a Writer' project is described ..." Active voice puts the subject before the verb: Fernsten and Reda describe the "Seeing Yourself as a Writer" project in ...

Otherwise: good work.

angie

The curious-me wanted to know what will happen to IPython. The project documentation hosted at ReadTheDocs links to The Big Split blog. I didn't get past the first line though because I was distracted by the historical perspective on IPython. And that's when I realized that it would be unfair not to mention Sage that isn't only just another tool. The Why is Sage free/open source question under Sage FAQ bridges the open source and scientific communities in a brilliant way and since Internet links aren't permanent it's worth recording the text here:

Why is Sage free/open source?

A standard rule in the mathematics community is that everything is laid open for inspection. The Sage project believes that not doing the same for mathematics software is at best a gesture of impoliteness and rudeness, and at worst a violation against standard scientific practices. An underlying philosophical principle of Sage is to apply the system of open exchange and peer review that characterizes scientific communication to the development of mathematics software. Neither the Sage project nor the Sage Development Team make any claims to being the original proponents of this principle.

The development model of Sage is largely inspired by the free software movement as spearheaded by the Free Software Foundation, and by the open source movement. One source of inspiration from within the mathematics community is Joachim Neubüser as expressed in the paper

• J. Neubüser. An invitation to computational group theory. In C. M. Campbell, T. C. Hurley, E. F. Robertson, S. J. Tobin, and J. J. Ward, editors, Groups ‘93 Galway/St. Andrews, Volume 2, volume 212 of London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, pages 457–475. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

and in particular the following quotation from his paper:

You can read Sylow's Theorem and its proof in Huppert's book in
the library without even buying the book and then you can use
Sylow's Theorem for the rest of your life free of charge,
but...for many computer algebra systems license fees have to be
paid regularly for the total time of their use. In order to
protect what you pay for, you do not get the source, but only an
executable, i.e. a black box. You can press buttons and you get
answers in the same way as you get the bright pictures from your
television set but you cannot control how they were made in either
case.

With this situation two of the most basic rules of conduct in
mathematics are violated: In mathematics information is passed on
free of charge and everything is laid open for checking. Not
applying these rules to computer algebra systems that are made for
mathematical research...means moving in a most undesirable
direction. Most important: Can we expect somebody to believe a
result of a program that he is not allowed to see? Moreover: Do we
really want to charge colleagues in Moldava several years of their
salary for a computer algebra system?

Similar sentiments were also expressed by Andrei Okounkov as can be found in

• V. Muñoz and U. Persson. Interviews with three Fields medalists. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 54(3):405–410, 2007.

in particular the following quotation:

Computers are no more a threat to mathematicians than food
processors are a threat to cooks. As mathematics gets more and
more complex while the pace of our lives accelerates, we must
delegate as much as we can to machines. And I mean both numeric
and symbolic work. Some people can manage without dishwashers, but
I think proofs come out a lot cleaner when routine work is
automated.

This brings up many issues. I am not an expert, but I think we
need a symbolic standard to make computer manipulations easier to
document and verify. And with all due respect to the free market,
perhaps we should not be dependent on commercial software here. An
open-source project could, perhaps, find better answers to the
obvious problems such as availability, bugs, backward
compatibility, platform independence, standard libraries, etc. One
can learn from the success of TeX and more specialized software
like Macaulay2. I do hope that funding agencies are looking into
this.

There you have it. Happy open sourcing!

Too right, Jon. In many ways, past experience is often the *WORST* predictor of future performance, because it often ignores motivation.

Example: in Grade 9 my "teacher" lost my math mid-term (how I'll never understand). So he gave me "52% because you're probably mediocre". I was so angry that I determined to show the jerk and got 82% on the year-end departmentals. I also went on to get high 90's in my high school math courses.

Never underestimate the "I'll show you" effect. :-)

To quote Shawn Achor from his TED talk¹, "If I asked a question like, "How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?" scientists change the answer to "How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?" and we tailor the class towards the average."  This ignores those above and below the curve. 

I suspect that the issues surrounding analytics and their impact on our lives will become more pronounced as AI use increases.  There will be many cases where an algorithm comes to the wrong conclusion.  How can a clear feedback loop be identified to verify and correct misdecision?

Richard, I like the "I'll show you" effect.  I'm going to use that one.  I've had similar personal experiences as well.

Cheers,
Kyle

¹ https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?language=en