[SciPy-Dev] Thoughts on creating a toolbox for analysis of nonlinear dynamical system analysis

[Joseph Slater]

> On Mar 23, 2018, at 11:28 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 8:24 AM, Sayantan Majumdar <emailforsayantan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I work with Nonlinear Dynamical Systems and there are no good toolboxes that provide fast and stable tools for the analysis of such systems.
> 
> there were a lot of good toolboxes in the 80's( I heard ) and there are some packages where those algorithms have been re-implemented and sometimes used, like the PyDSTool package.But its too slow and everything is not stable in it plus some important tools are not there.
> 
> This can be a good thing to start in this gsoc right?
> 
> No, that's not a good topic for GSoC, because it's too large in scope and because there's no mentoring project for it if you try to start something from scratch.
> 
> Ralf
>  

I concur with Ralf, while also agreeing with the need. I have taken a small step with my package mousai which at this time is a rather limited harmonic balance solver that certainly needs improvements for greater robustness (on github, and pypi- https://josephcslater.github.io/mousai/). I have spent more time adding issues than anything else lately. I would certainly welcome anyone who wants to join forces. At some time, merging into scipy would be a goal, but I don't believe that it's worthy right now. 

Ralf: There was a recent discussion on the frustrations of lack of SciPy contributors- mousai is an example, along with my other projects, some more relevant to potential future inclusion in SciPy, some less. 

I'm concerned with PyDSTool: I don't know that it is being maintained, and my observation was that the overhead for being able to use it is very high. My interest would be in connecting aerodynamic and structural codes (likely commercial) together. These could include millions of states. PyDSTool seemed to me to expect hand coded equations a bit much. Maybe it's just me, but it looks great but I thought the overhead to get into using it was off-putting for most engineers/students. 

Joe