NYCPHP Meetup

[Hans Zaunere]

Hi Carlos,

Good to see they haven't buried you completly :)

--- Carlos Hoyos <cahoyos at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> I just started reading this article:
> 
>       http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-linphp/
> 
> and the first sentence caught my eye
> "In contrast with other open source languages like Perl and Python, PHP
> lacks a robust community effort to develop a math library."

I agree, although am skeptical on the "robust community effort to develop a
math library" for the aforementioned languages, as well.

Regardless, PHP is geared toward Internet connectivity, databases, and
frontend types of manipulation.  Not until recently has it been recognized as
useful for other, "old school" jobs, and there is a lot of room to grow.

> Anyway, php has some math functions built in the standard module (and also
> bcmath)... but I don't recall any advanced math libraries (lineal algebra,
> statistics, series, complex numbers).

I haven't seen anything like this either.  That said, there are some
libraries for graphing functionality (not just drawing the actual graph, but
doing the number crunching), albeit not onpar, last I looked, with some of
the C libs for similar purposes.

> I am originally a mathematician with good experience in algorithms, and
> would be interested in building (or at least sizing the possibility of) an
> advanced math module for php. Could this be worth it for PHP ?

I think so; especially from the perspective of graphing, statistics and
analysis.  It could be hugely useful in the mapping, financial/stock markets,
and scientific arenas.

> If anybody is aware of any work being conducted in that direction, is
> interested in discussing this a bit more, has any suggestions of other
> contacts in that area, please reply or contact me directly

I wish I could help more than saying what a good idea it would be.  This
doesn't help much:

http://www.google.com/search?q=php+math+library

but:

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=98&discrim=164

may be a nice list of libraries that would be canidates for wrapping in a PHP
extension.

Regards,

H