[PLUG] Brain the size of a planet

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky znmeb at cesmail.net
Thu May 5 03:02:04 UTC 2005



Rich Shepard wrote:

>   Yes, R is the language of choice for statistical analyses. However,
> I use
> octave to calculate eigenvectors and eigenvalues of symmetrical matrices.
> SciLab will do the same job, but I wrote the three line code in octave
> so it
> does the job.

IIRC R carries an eigenvalue/eigenvector routine as well. It has to be
able to do them internally to do principal component analysis, etc. In
fact, they may be carrying all of LAPACK, since they've deprecated
linking with external LAPACK libraries. They still link to external BLAS
by default and detect Atlas if it's installed.

>
>   For plotting of scientific data, I use Gri. It's a replacement for
> gnuplot
> that is much better documented. I've used it to draw river cross-sections
> from bathymetry data. I'm just starting to learn pstricks, too, which
> is a
> powerful use of the PostScript language that produces pdf files and
> provides
> the highest possible quality of graphics to be included in LaTeX docs.

Speaking of LaTeX docs, have you discovered TeXmacs and LyX yet? :)

> There is a plethora of tools for scientific computing in the F/OSS world.
> As far as I can determine (based on my needs and those of others with
> whom
> I've discussed -- or vented about -- the issue) the two great holes in
> F/OSS
> are industrial-strength (no pun intended) project managment (a la
> Symantec's
> TimeLine for DOS) and prospecting/sales management software.
>
> Project management is more than drawing Gantt charts. It's also CPM
> (critical path method), PERT, resource leveling, conflict resolution
> (reschedule tasks and resources to minimize delay in the overall schedule
> when one tasks slips) and so on. What I find today are either toys or
> designed for software development projects.

Amen to that!! There's a third hole, at least for me. It's called
MindManager -- it's a MindMapping/Project Managment tool that links to
Microsoft Project, Outlook, Word and PowerPoint. It's the only reason I
still have a Windows partition on one of my machines. "MrProject" or
"Planner" or whatever it's called these days is so lame I don't know why
Red Hat ships it as part of their desktop. Well, maybe OpenOffice 3.0
will have an MS Project lookalike -- they seem to have done a reasonable
job capturing the MS Access interface.

Incidentally, that line I used in a previous email about people wanting
to go off and build their own tools rather than contributing to existing
ones came from a project management tool site -- I forget which. But
it's a *lot* of work moving from Planner to MS Project, or from FreeMind
to MindManager X5. How do you manage that scale of project without open
source project management tools? <ducking>


>   You've already read my comments on a contact management system for
> prospecting and sales tracking. 'Nuff written on that.
>
> Rich
>



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