Symbolic algebra software

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This article is a draft

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Symbolic algebra software is software that is able to work directly with symbolic expressions (derivatives, integrals and so forth) and permits exact arithmetic (e.g. exp(-i*pi/2) = -i) and other formal operations that arise in domains like number theory, group theory and so forth. Most such programs also permit the use of approximate numerical calculations using floating point numbers for handling problems that are analytically intractable. Some well-known symbolic algebra software packages are the commercial products Mathematica and Maple, neither of which is available on Compute Canada clusters. An open source alternative, SageMath, is however available as a module:

Question.png
[name@server ~]$ module load sagemath

Afterwards you can then run the software interactively, e.g.

Question.png
[name@server ~]$ sage
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ SageMath version 8.1, Release Date: 2017-12-07                     │
│ Type "notebook()" for the browser-based notebook interface.        │
│ Type "help()" for help.                                            │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
sage: