Since I brought this up (search haskell' list) I should probably volunteer to help. If people agree I can coordinate an effort to build a mathematically sound hierarchy. Unfortunately my mathematical knowledge is less than ideal for this purpose (I am actively remedying this at university). However, if there is an administrative burden I volunteer to shoulder it.
<br><br>On a related note I have written a binding to Matlab data files and arrays if anyone is interested, and I am embarking on a project to bind to CBLAS and CLAPack.<br><br>Vivian<br><br>> <br>> Jacques Carette wrote:
<br>> > <br>> >> perhaps i was mistaken in thinking that there is a group of <br>> >> math-interested haskellers out there discussing, developing, and <br>> >> documenting the area? or perhaps that group needs introductory
<br>> >> tutorials presenting its work?<br>> > My guess is that there are a number of people "waiting in <br>> the wings", <br>> > waiting for a critical mass of features to show up before really
<br>> > diving in. See <a href="http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/plmms07/">http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/plmms07/</a><br>> > for my reasons for being both interested and wary).<br>> > <br>> > Probably the simplest test case is the difficulties that people are
<br>> > (still) encountering doing matrix/vector algebra in Haskell. One <br>> > either quickly encounters efficiency issues (although PArr might <br>> > help), or typing issues (though many tricks are known, but not
<br>> > necessarily simple). Blitz++ and the STL contributed <br>> heavily to C++ <br>> > being taken seriously by people in the scientific computation <br>> > community. Haskell has even more _potential_, but it is
<br>> definitely unrealised potential.<br>> > <br>> <br>> I am one of those mathematicians "waiting in the wings." <br>> Haskell looked<br>> very appealing at first, and the type system seems perfect,
<br>> especially for<br>> things like multilinear algebra where currying and duality is <br>> fundamental.<br>> I too was put off by the Num issues though--strange mixture <br>> of sophisticated<br>> category theory and lack of a sensible hierarchy of algebraic objects.
<br>> <br>> However, I've decided I'm more interested in helping to fix <br>> it than wait;<br>> so count me in on an effort to make Haskell more <br>> mathematical. For me that<br>> probably starts with the semigroup/group/ring setup, and good
<br>> arbitrary-precision as well as approximate linear algebra support.<br>> <br>> -- <br><br>> <br>> I've been watching this thread for quite a while now, and it seems to<br>> me that there is quite a bit of interest in at least working on a new
<br>> Prelude. I've also noticed a 'The Other Prelude' page on the wiki<br>> [<a href="http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_Other_Prelude">http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_Other_Prelude</a>] and they seem to
<br>> have a start on this. So it seems that we should actually start this,<br>> because people will contribute. Can somebody with good Cabal skills<br>> and maybe access to <a href="http://darcs.haskell.org">darcs.haskell.org
</a> start a new library for people<br>> to start patching?<br>> <br>> Bryan Burgers<br>> <br><br>> <br>> <br>> On Apr 2, 2007, at 3:24 PM, Andrzej Jaworski wrote:<br>> <br>> >> I too was put off by the Num issues though--strange mixture of
<br>> >> sophisticated<br>> >> category theory and lack of a sensible hierarchy of algebraic <br>> >> objects.<br>> ><br>> > Perhaps we should replace CT with lattice theoretic thinking (
e.g. <br>> > functor = monotonic<br>> > function) before cleaning up the type-related mess?<br>> > See: <a href="http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/269479.html">http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/269479.html</a><br>> >
<br>> >> so count me in on an effort to make Haskell more mathematical. <br>> >> For me that<br>> >> probably starts with the semigroup/group/ring setup, and good<br>> >> arbitrary-precision as well as approximate linear algebra support.
<br>> ><br>> > I agree: semigoups like lattices are everywhere.<br>> > Then there could be a uniform treatment of linear algebra, <br>> > polynomial equations, operator<br>> > algebra, etc. So, perhaps haste is not a good advice here?
<br>> ><br>> > -Andrzej<br>> >