RE: JAMA Cholesky

[Boyce Byerly <BByerly@newcourse.com>]

> I sent out a message to that effect to the mailing list 
> associated with the group that maintains this.  Since
> the project *is* open source, I might just fix the problem
> myself and release my changes back to the group; that's the
> sort of way progress gets made for packages like that.   I
> haven't heard back from the group on this yet.  My experience
> has been that usually commercial software is no better than 
> open source (for example, StatBeans wanted a lot of money, and
> our opinion of that software is quite low.)

I didn't respond to your original message because I found it offensive.

If I'm reading this correctly, let me disclaim any offense!  I 
think you're reading someone else's comments as mine, particularly
the characterization of the package as "amateurish".  I did
point out that I *believed* there should be a test for zeros
on the determinant, and that such a test should throw an 
exception if detected, but that there may have been mathematical
issues beyond me.   The last sentence about "no better than"
is perhaps true as stated, although if I'd realized it was
being read by a wide audience, I would have phrased it as 
"open source is usually at least as good as commercial software."
My offer to make improvements and make them available is,
in my eyes, certainly a well-intentioned and appropriate 
action in the open source community, although it's somewhat 
presumptious for my level of expertise in linear algebra.

The sample matrix for me did produce "?"'s in the result
matrix; my preference would be for an exception to be
thrown, rather.  This was not the case with my test of
the package.

-Boyce Byerly