[SciPy-Dev] GSoC 2019 Projects

[Peter Bell]

Hello,

I am interested in applying for Google summer of code and was wondering if you
are still looking for students?

A bit about myself
-------------------
My name is Peter and I'm in my 4th (penultimate) year of an integrated masters
in computational physics. Programming and numerical methods forms a key part of
this degree and many of my courses make heavy use of python with cython, numpy,
scipy, matplotlib, etc. While my degree is primarily Physics, I have taken a
number of computer science courses covering software engineering, object
oriented design and high performance programming.

I also have an interest in open source collaboration and, when time has allowed,
have contributed to a few projects via github (@peterbell10). The majority of
my contributions have been to a minecraft server which I've been contributing to
since summer 2017. You can see my pull requests here:
https://github.com/cuberite/cuberite/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Amerged+author%3Apeterbell10

Questions about the projects
-----------------------------
I have some questions regarding both of the proposed projects.

Revamp fftpack:
* Is the primary intention to keep the scipy.fftpack interface the same, but add
  some mechanism to inject custom implementations? Or will this require changes
  to the front-facing interface as well? (e.g. for agreement with numpy.fft)
* What should this look like from the user's point of view? e.g.

       import scipy.fftpack
       import pyFFTW.interfaces.scipy_fftpack as fftw_pack

       scipy.fftpack.set_backend(fftw_pack)

  where we just provide a module implementing a well-documented backend
  interface. Alternatively, fftw_pack could be an object, potentially with
  its own instances of caches and settings which might allow for more
  configuration from the user.

Improve ODE solvers (mainly the first 3 tasks):
* How much mathematical background is required? I have done a course covering
  the mathematics of ODE schemes including RK methods and some variable timestep
  methods, but am not familiar with control theory which is mentioned for the
  3rd task.
* Will developing the test set just involve binding existing implementations to
  python for use in a testing framework, or do you expect these to be rewritten
  entirely in python or cython?


Best regards,
Peter
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/attachments/20190403/340a31bb/attachment.html>