Come and learn GAP

If you are interested to learn how to use GAP, an open source system for computational discrete algebra, we invite you to come on Wednesday 20th February to Maths Theatre D at 2pm. We are starting to use the first hour of weekly meetings on Semigroups and Digraphs in GAP that take place on Wednesdays to give an introduction to GAP using the Software Carpentry lesson “Programming with GAP”.

This lesson is centred around a common task of searching in the Small Groups Library for interesting examples and counterexamples, and a particular research problem in which we will be interested to find examples of groups such that an average order of their elements is an integer.

The lesson will lead the learner along the path from working in the GAP command line and exploring algebraic objects interactively to saving the GAP code into files, creating functions and regression tests, and further to performing comprehensive search and extending the system by adding new attributes.

On this path, the learner will become familiar with:

• basic constructions of the GAP programming language,
• ways to find necessary information in the GAP system, and
• good design practices to organise GAP code into complex programs.

The lesson is designed to be taught over a duration of about 4 hours, so we will cover it over a cycle of meetings. This Wednesday we will start by learning how to work with GAP in the command line, including

• time-saving tips and tricks,
• using GAP help system, and
• basic objects and constructions in the GAP language.

I hope that I will show some tricks which will surprise even those who have been using GAP before!