[Haskell-cafe] Mathematics in Haskell Re: Why the Prelude must die

[Jason Morton]

NumericPrelude does seem like a good starting point for discussion and
addition.  Is it still being actively developed, and what are the
goals there?

On 4/3/07, Henning Thielemann <lemming at henning-thielemann.de> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007, jasonm wrote:
>
> > Jacques Carette wrote:
> > >
> > >> perhaps i was mistaken in thinking that there is a group of
> > >> math-interested
> > >> haskellers out there discussing, developing, and documenting the area? or
> > >> perhaps that group needs introductory tutorials presenting its work?
> > > My guess is that there are a number of people "waiting in the wings",
> > > waiting for a critical mass of features to show up before really diving
> > > in.  See
> > > http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/plmms07/
> > > for my reasons for being both interested and wary).
> > >
> > > Probably the simplest test case is the difficulties that people are
> > > (still) encountering doing matrix/vector algebra in Haskell.  One either
> > > quickly encounters efficiency issues (although PArr might help), or
> > > typing issues (though many tricks are known, but not necessarily
> > > simple).  Blitz++ and the STL contributed heavily to C++ being taken
> > > seriously by people in the scientific computation community.  Haskell
> > > has even more _potential_, but it is definitely unrealised potential.
> >
> > I am one of those mathematicians "waiting in the wings."  Haskell looked
> > very appealing at first, and the type system seems perfect, especially for
> > things like multilinear algebra where currying and duality is fundamental.
> > I too was put off by the Num issues though--strange mixture of sophisticated
> > category theory and lack of a sensible hierarchy of algebraic objects.
> >
> > However, I've decided I'm more interested in helping to fix it than wait;
> > so count me in on an effort to make Haskell more mathematical.  For me that
> > probably starts with the semigroup/group/ring setup, and good
> > arbitrary-precision as well as approximate linear algebra support.
>
> NumericPrelude popped up in this thread earlier. Is this the starting
> point you are after?
>  http://darcs.haskell.org/numericprelude/
>