Other Resources for Sage

Websites

• The Master List of Help Resources is a website where you will find a registry of all the items which could go on this list. That includes tutorials, quick-start guides, reference materials, books, web tours, videos, and even discussion groups. There is a small but growing number of resources that are written in languages other than English.
• The Standard SageMath Documentation is the most complete and up-to-date collection of Sage documentation, covering topics from very elementary to very advanced. If you are just a beginner, or you are a software developer eager to contribute your own code to Sage, or anything in the middle, these are the resources you need. Here is a list of some of the most important ones:
  • The Thematic Tutorials: This is the housing for a very large number of Sage tutorials. They are geared at common areas of mathematics, like "Calculus", "Group Theory", "Linear Programming", or "Algebraic Combinatorics."
  • The Web Tour: Aimed at mathematics faculty, this tour can be quite informative about some of Sage's advanced features, as well as its basic ones.
  • The official Sage Reference Manual: This is a very useful resource, but it is not for beginners! Be warned, it is literally thousands of pages. This is like an encyclopedia—you don't read it cover to cover; instead you look up what you need.
  • The official Web Tutorial: This is geared more toward graduate students, senior math juniors, and faculty.
  • The Faculty Tutorials: As the website describes itself, "this is a set of tutorials developed for the MAA PREP workshops 'Sage: Using Open-Source Mathematics Software with Undergraduates' (funding provided by the National Science Foundation under grant DUE 0817071) in the summers of 2010–2012."
  • The Quickstart Tutorials: These are part of the Faculty Tutorials just mentioned above. They are geared toward specific undergraduate math courses, and are meant to be comprehensive to a student who has just completed that particular course. Furthermore, they are all very short. Many are a single page.
• The Feature Tour: If you would like to show your friends, parents, non-mathematicians, or even some of your professors or colleagues, what Sage is about and what is capable of, this is the place to go. In particular, there is a Quickstart Tour, which is a bit math-heavy, but quite interesting, and a Graphics Tour about the beautiful graphics that Sage can create.
• If you would like to know more about Sage interactive capabilities, there is a list Sage Interacts that you can visit. These examples cover many areas of study such as mathematics, bioinformatics, physics, statistics, etc. This is a resource instructors will find particularly useful.
• Mike O'Sullivan and David Monarres' Online Tutorial has some topics that we did not reach in Sage for Undergraduates. Those include abstract algebra, coding theory, and writing larger programming projects. It is also available as a PDF document.
• Paul Lutus, Exploring Mathematics with Sage does a good job explaining the open-source culture of Sage development. It also has some very interesting application problems. Be sure to look at the top of your screen for the pull-down menu that shows all of the sections. Otherwise, you won't be able to navigate beyond the introduction.

Free Books

• Paul Zimmermann, et.al, Computational Mathematics with SageMath is an excellent resource to learn more about Sage. In many ways, it can serve as a sequel to Sage for Undergraduates. Whether you are a high-school student, an undergraduate student, a graduate student, a teacher, or a researcher, this book has something to offer to you. If you would like to have a printed version, it is also available as a SIAM Book. Also, there are translations available in German and French, although they may not be as up-to-date as the English version. (This book has been endorsed by the American Institute of Mathematics Open Textbook Initiative.)
• Robert Beezer, A First Course in Linear Algebra is a highly recommended "introductory textbook designed for university sophomores and juniors." The online version of this book uses Sage code embedded directly in the text and powered by the SageCell Server, so you will be able to run Sage programs from within the book. You will not only learn linear algebra, but also how to use Sage to solve problems in that context. You can also buy a printed version or download a PDF version. (This book has been endorsed by the American Institute of Mathematics Open Textbook Initiative.)
• Thomas W. Judson, Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications is a "textbook designed to teach the principles and theory of abstract algebra to college juniors and seniors in a rigorous manner." The online version of this book is powered by the SageCell Server, so it will not only teach you how to use Sage in a context applied to abstract algebra, but also will allow you to actually use Sage from within the book. Besides the usual exercises that you would expect in a book like this, there are many Sage exercises contributed by Prof. Robert Beezer. You can buy a printed version or download a PDF version. (This book has been endorsed by the American Institute of Mathematics Open Textbook Initiative.)
• William Stein, Elementary Number Theory: Primes, Congruences, and Sequences is a "textbook about classical elementary number theory and elliptic curves," written by the creator of Sage himself. The book makes extensive use of Sage in examples, so it is an excellent resource for a course in elementary number theory, with a computational approach. The book was published by Springer-Verlag and is also available on Amazon. Additionally, you can download the PDF version, generously authorized by the publisher. (This book has been endorsed by the American Institute of Mathematics Open Textbook Initiative.)
• Thomas W. Judson, The Ordinary Differential Equations Project is an ongoing effort by Prof. Judson to write a book dealing with ordinary differential equations using Sage. Currently, the book is not yet completed, but it is an excellent reference material on the subject.

Non-Free Books

• Razvan A. Mezei, An Introduction to SAGE Programming, with Applications to SAGE Interacts for Numerical Methods is an introductory book to Sage and to the creation of interactive applets with Sage. Most topics it covers overlap with what I deal with in Sage for Undergraduates. However, this book puts an emphasis on the creation of Sage interacts, which will be useful for the instructor wishing to create demonstrations of mathematical concepts for her/his students. This book is not intended for a comprehensive course on numerical methods. If that is what you are looking for, see the next item of this list.
• George A. Anastassiou and Razvan A. Mezei, Numerical Analysis Using Sage is a fantastic introduction to numerical methods. Although this book does use Sage, it is primarily meant for a course on numerical methods, so its focus is on the mathematical algorithms. However, you will be able to improve your programming skills by learning how to implementing those algorithms as Sage/Python subroutines.
• Craig Finch, Sage Beginner's guide is an introductory book to Sage. Some topics it covers overlap with the topics treated by Sage for Undergraduates, but both books complement each other. If you have access to this book, you can use it as an additional help resource for Sage for Undergraduates, and vice versa. However, if you don't have access to this book, there is no need to buy it—unless it is a mandatory lecture for your course.

Other Sage Resources

• A friend of mine, Travis Scrimshaw, has made a series of four videos that cover a great deal about Sage. The videos were made in July of 2013, so they could be a little outdated. However, they still are an excellent learning resource.
  • Watch Part I.
  • Watch Part II.
  • Watch Part III.
  • Watch Part IV.
• Several Sage users have made Quick Reference Cards, to help them learn the commands and have them handy while using Sage.
• The Ask SageMath forum is a place where anybody can ask a question about Sage, and an expert on Sage will answer it soon. There is a vibrant activity there, since the community is very large.
• The Sage Community has created a series of mailing lists and chat rooms that you can always consult. Here is a list of some of them:
  • sage-support: This is a forum similar to Ask SageMath. You can ask your questions here.
  • sage-edu: This forum is for discussing the use of Sage for educational purposes.
  • sage-finance: This is for discussions about the use of Sage in Financial Mathematics.
  • sage-windows: Do you use Sage on Microsoft Windows™? Here you can post your questions specific to that operating system.
  • Note: Other Sage forums and mailing lists can be found here and here.
• There is a list of Books that Use Sage. Of course, some of these are about exotic research-oriented topics meant for PhD-students in mathematics. However, several of them are entirely suitable for undergraduates. On the same web page, you will find a bigger list that also contains articles and theses citing Sage.

Python Programming Resources

• If you know how to program, but not in Python, then Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Python 3 is an excellent and up-to-date book to start. You can read it for free as a web page, or buy a copy from Amazon.
• If you always wanted to know how the computer works when executing some Python code, then you will love Python Tutor, an online visualizer of code execution. Just click on "Start visualizing your code" on that page. You will be presented with an empty text field where you can write a Python program. When you are finished, press the "Visualize Execution" button, and watch this website do its magic. On the left, you will see your code and some buttons to control the execution; on the right, you will see the instructions executing and the output of your program. As with the SageCell Server, you can create permaliks to share your code visualizations.
• The Scipy Lecture Notes are for the scientist, engineer or mathematician wishing to use Python in her/his daily work. This is a series of tutorials, but be warned, they are very advanced!

Report a Broken Link or an Outdated Resource

• If you found a broken link, then please write to me (Prof. Gregory V. Bard) at the email address below, using the subject "Sage for Undergraduates." (The email address is shown as an image, to protect me from spam bots.)
• If you found an outdated resource, here is a list of things to try before contacting me:
  1. Verify that this is not a Python 3 compatibility issue: Since January 1st, 2020, the world has dropped support for Python 2 in favor of Python 3. In particular, starting from version 9.0, Sage runs on Python 3. It is possible that some resources (specially books) have not had enough time to catch up. Take a look at the Python3-Switch Wiki to verify if this is the case. Do NOT report these issues to me; just be patient until the Python 3 adoption reaches that particular resource.
  2. Ask about it in the Ask SageMath forum: SageMath has been around for a long time now (indeed, since 2005). During these years, there have been some changes to the syntax, deprecated or deleted commands, improvements, and enhancements. Although great care is put on trying to keep backwards-compatibility, very rarely some of this changes can break previously existing code, or change the output, or even introduce a bug in Sage itself. If you believe you have found something like this, it is always a good idea to visit the Ask SageMath forum. Probably, somebody already asked about the problem, and somebody already gave an answer. Otherwise, you will find very kind people there, willing to help you with your inquiry.
  3. Contact the author of the outdated resource: If you have verified that you in fact found an outdated resource, there is little I can actually do about it—except for removing the link. So, instead of reporting the problem to me, contact the author of that particular resource. Authors—as any other human—make mistakes, so they will be very thankful for your help.

  If all the previous suggestions fail, please contact me so I can remove or replace the outdated resource.

Last updated on September 29th, 2021.