[Haskell] Matlab/BLAS/LAPack and Re: [Haskell-cafe] Mathematics in Haskell Re: Why the Prelude must Die

[Alexander McPhail]

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.

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.

Vivian

>
> 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.
>
> --

>
> I've been watching this thread for quite a while now, and it seems to
> me that there is quite a bit of interest in at least working on a new
> Prelude. I've also noticed a 'The Other Prelude' page on the wiki
> [http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_Other_Prelude] and they seem to
> have a start on this. So it seems that we should actually start this,
> because people will contribute. Can somebody with good Cabal skills
> and maybe access to darcs.haskell.org start a new library for people
> to start patching?
>
> Bryan Burgers
>

>
>
> On Apr 2, 2007, at 3:24 PM, Andrzej Jaworski wrote:
>
> >> 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.
> >
> > Perhaps we should replace CT with lattice theoretic thinking (e.g.
> > functor = monotonic
> > function) before cleaning up the type-related mess?
> > See: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/269479.html
> >
> >> 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.
> >
> > I agree: semigoups like lattices are everywhere.
> > Then there could be a uniform treatment of linear algebra,
> > polynomial equations, operator
> > algebra, etc. So, perhaps haste is not a good advice here?
> >
> > -Andrzej
> >
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