Stephen M. Watt

Stephen M. Watt

David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

University of Waterloo, Canada

Title:Web Technologies for Next Generation Symbolic Computation

 

Abstract
 

Systems for symbolic mathematical computation have risen to wide-spread acceptance over the past 50 years, from the early interactive systems of Reduce and Macsyma, to the popular general systems such as Maple and Mathematica, and open source and specialized tools.    For the most part, these systems have not strayed far from the original model of a teletype conversation between a user and system, with the addition of batch computing, typeset formula display and graphical rendering of objects.   Over the same period, other software tools have evolved to embrace media convergence,  dynamic environments and multi-party interaction.  In this talk we explore how these technologies can be applied and extended for symbolic mathematics.   In particular, we will touch on the priority of mathematical collaboration, the deepening relationships among document analysis, computer algebra and proof assistants, and the suitability of specific technologies such as TypeScript, WebAssembly and Node for symbolic mathematical systems implementation.  We will conclude with some thoughts on how a next generation of symbolic mathematics tools can impact education, industry and every-day life.