[Rd] Computer algebra in R - would that be an idea??

Wed Jul 13 12:04:35 CEST 2005

I think it is essential that the program which 'we' are trying to interface from R is under active development. I guess that it would also be 'politically wise' (and potentially useful) to ensure that the people behind Maxima and/or Yacas and/or ... find that it would be a good idea to interface their program from R (I don't see why they should not, though...)

Some time ago, I developed the mimR package which is essentially a wrapper to a statistical program called mim. The interfacing was made possible by that the creator of mim (David Edwards) made some small changes to his program such that it could be accessed programatically. I am not sure what the details were, but as I understood it at that time, it was not at whole lot of things that needed to be done. (And that was for Windows platforms only). Perhaps Yacas/Maxima/... - people could be talked into such changes of their packages??? Yet, it would require that R-people who know some details about such communications contact them..

Best regards
Søren

________________________________

Fra: Robin Hankin [mailto:r.hankin at noc.soton.ac.uk]
Sendt: on 13-07-2005 09:04
Til: Gabor Grothendieck
Cc: Søren Højsgaard; Duncan Murdoch; r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
Emne: Re: [Rd] Computer algebra in R - would that be an idea??

Hi guys

another option would be David Gillespie's  "calc", which is written 
in emacs lisp.

This is a stable system with (AFAICS) as large user base.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be actively developed, as the last 
stable version (2.02f)
appears to be 1996.  I don't know if this would be a contraindication.

Robin

On 13 Jul 2005, at 02:36, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

> I don't know which free system is best.  I have mainly used Yacas
> but my needs to date have been pretty minimal so I suspect
> any of them would have worked.
>
> Eric's COM solution, once I have it figured out, will likely get me
> to the next step on Windows.  I did some googling around and
> found this:
>
> http://www.koders.com/python/
> fidDCC1B0FBFABC770277A28835D5FFADC9D25FF54E.aspx
>
> which is a python interface to Yacas which may give some ideas
> on how to interface it to R.
>
>
> On 7/12/05, Søren Højsgaard <Soren.Hojsgaard at agrsci.dk> wrote:
>
>> Personally, I like Maxima better than Yacas, but in both cases the 
>> solution (at least a minimal one) should be doable: A small 
>> program which pipes R commands into a terminal running Maxima/
>> Yacas and taking the output back into R. I am not much into the 
>> technical details, but isn't that what can be done with the COM 
>> automatation server on Windows?? (I don't know what the equivalent 
>> would be on unix?).
>> Best regards
>> Søren
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> Fra: Simon Blomberg [mailto:Simon.Blomberg at anu.edu.au]
>> Sendt: on 13-07-2005 01:52
>> Til: Duncan Murdoch; Gabor Grothendieck
>> Cc: Søren Højsgaard; r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
>> Emne: Re: [Rd] Computer algebra in R - would that be an idea??
>>
>>
>>
>> I would use such a symbolic math package for R. I have dreamt of an
>> open-source solution with functionality similar to mathStatica.
>> http://www.mathstatica.com/ Is yacas the best system to consider? 
>> What
>> about  Maxima http://maxima.sourceforge.net/, which is also GPL, 
>> or maybe
>> Axiom http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/axiom, which has a 
>> modified BSD
>> license?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Simon.
>>
>> At 01:25 AM 13/07/2005, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/12/2005 10:57 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7/12/05, Søren Højsgaard <Soren.Hojsgaard at agrsci.dk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> From time to time people request symbolic computations beyond 
>>>>>> what
>>>>>>
>>> D() and deriv() etc can provide. A brief look at the internet 
>>> shows that
>>> there are many more or less developed computer algebra packages 
>>> freely
>>> available. Therefore, I wondered if it would be an idea to try to
>>> 'integrate' one of these packages in R, which I guess can be done 
>>> in more
>>> or less elegant ways... I do not know any of the computer algebra 
>>> people
>>> around the World, but perhaps some other people from the R-
>>> community do
>>> and would be able to/interested in establishing such a connection...
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Coincidentally I asked the yacas developer about this just 
>>>> yesterday:
>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?
>>> thread_id=7711431&forum_id=2216
>>>
>>> It sounds like developing an R package to act as a wrapper would 
>>> be the
>>> best approach.  I didn't see documentation for their API (the 
>>> exports of
>>> their DLL), but I didn't spend long looking.
>>>
>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>
>> Simon Blomberg, B.Sc.(Hons.), Ph.D, M.App.Stat.
>> Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies
>> The Australian National University
>> Canberra ACT 0200
>> Australia
>> T: +61 2 6125 7800 email: Simon.Blomberg_at_anu.edu.au
>> F: +61 2 6125 0757
>> CRICOS Provider # 00120C
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

--
Robin Hankin
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