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Poll:Mathematica vs Maple

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Originally posted by: DrPizza
I couldn't give you a fair answer, unless you told me what you were using them for. If it's for simple stuff like Calculus, then either is fine, but apparently more people like Maple for the simple things.. But, once beyond calculus, I prefer mathematica by a large margin.
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That about sums up my feelings also. Maple's UI is a little easier to use at first, but as a CS/Math double major, I far preferred to use Mathematica. To me, the commands in mathematica made perfect sense.

Try out Maple or Matlab if you can get your hands on a copy or a machine with a copy of it on it. Go ask the Profs in the department which they prefer and which programs are on the machines in the dept. (Mathematica? Maple? SPSS?).
 
Mathema6tica Rocks ... saved my brain in Grad School 😛
Never used Maple, so no vote from me.
MathCAD is nice, btu the symbolic manipulation is definetely lacking wrt Mathematica. I base that comment on helping out a collegue who was a MathCAD guru when MathCAD choked on some stuff that Mathematica just breezed through (some fun with elliptic integrals)

edit ... oops, meant MathCAD
 
I had to use Maple for Calc1 and it was a pretty neat program, except the syntax was a little hard to remember. I haven't tried Mathematica.
 
back in college we used mathematica and C to create some really neat stuff...best of all was 3d representations of the heat equation and then there was gererating fractals on the fly from within mathematica, all pretty interesting stuff and was really powerful.
Maple was eh...it has the functionality but not the sybolic interpretations that seemed to be easier to follow i thought in mathematica
MathCAD was a helluva program and could do some really more powerful 3d stuff along with faster processing of equations it seemed like but it was only for the most hardcore mathematicians and programmers to tackle.
Mathemtica seemed to me to be the best balance of usability and power, althouh its menu system and processing algorithms could use some work
 
I don't know which one is better (I'm a Matlab user), but what I do suggest is get whatever your class TAs and school are using. That way when you need help on the homework, they'll know EXACTLY how to guide you through it.
 
maple > mathematica IMO

cant you just use it for free in your schools labs?

I have heard some of the free options like MuPAD are good and will do most of the stuff you probably need.

I just graduated with a math major, and hardly ever needed to use this software. And when I did, walking down to the lab was better than dishing out money for it. Anyways, when I did do some coding within maple for stuff like graph theory, some of their extra features are horribly inefficent. I remember us doing something in maple, then just writing simple C++ code to do the same thing and it was thousands of times faster. So in many cases instead of using the special features in maple etc.. you may be better off just writing a simple program.
 
As for which is better, I don't know.

As a studen you can get such great discounts that I'd buy BOTH.

Especially since you are a math major.

These are great for verifying your homework and methods IMO.
 
For those wondering about MatLab vs. Maple, they are pretty easily diffrentiated based on their strengths;

MatLab = Numeric
Maple = Symbolic

[EDIT: Haha, someone said the same thing about 10 posts up. That's what I get for not RTFThread.]
 
Originally posted by: Chaotic42
I'm just curious.

I downloaded the trial version, and it only worked for about an hour before I closed it and it would never open again. 😉

Apparently it's like $1700 unless I send them my student ID, in which case the price drops to $139.

Do you guys think it's worth $139?

Edit: Lots of people have been saying that Maple is better, and I was wondering what everyone else thinks.
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IAAMM (I am a math major) and graudiating in December.

I've had access to Mathematicia and Maple, and *NEVER* used them. If you ever truly need these, they will probably be provided.

On the other hand . . . I've used Matlab a ton. You can't really study ODE/PDE without matlab, and as a programmer the fact you can export matlab programs as .dll and link to them externally is invaluiable.

Then again, the focus on my studies were in algebra and discreet. Most of the trivial stuff you don't need a computer to do, and most of the hard stuff you really need to work in a language you are familiar with, and for me that was Matlab.

-Chu
 
On the other hand . . . I've used Matlab a ton. You can't really study ODE/PDE without matlab, and as a programmer the fact you can export matlab programs as .dll and link to them externally is invaluiable.
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FWIW Maple also has ODE/PDE solving functions, and you can have Maple generate C code for export IIRC...
 
Originally posted by: Shivatron
On the other hand . . . I've used Matlab a ton. You can't really study ODE/PDE without matlab, and as a programmer the fact you can export matlab programs as .dll and link to them externally is invaluiable.
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FWIW Maple also has ODE/PDE solving functions, and you can have Maple generate C code for export IIRC...
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Ok, I'm just biased 😀 What I really should say is I've never run into anything where Matlab wasn't suitable for the job.
 
Here's what the math department head said:

-
Chris,
We do not use either of these in our classes or labs. They are both very powerful programs,
but are quite complicated to learn and use. We do have a copy of a simple program
called Derive that is very user friendly. There is another called Scientific Notebook that
we got last year and are trying. The two programs that you named are great, but
you will have to be diligent in order to use them.

Come by if you would like to talk more about this.
-
 
i took a maple lab at school last year. helped a great deal with my other math classes. mathematica is too complex, learning curve too steep for my liking. maple is just great.

-Vivan
 
For me its MatLab hands down. It is strong and has a more userfriendly approch. Plus, it is king of Matrix operations !
 
My thoughts:

MathCAD - my favorite as it is easy to use, easy to learn, and very fast. Not as capable as the others though (being an engineer, it does all I need it to and what it won't do I'll just program myself).

MatLAB - the best of all programs if you are willing to put in the time. For most users it is overkill and not worth the time. If you want to work at it, MatLAB is probably by far the program to use for a math major. Unless things have changed in the last year, MatLAB was about $50 for the student version making it the cheapest.

Maple - very powerful but the least user friendly of any program. Probably the most commonly used program, but good results are few and far between. Need to integrate? No problem, just read the manual and attempt to find which of the 35+ integrations to use as only one will work. Need to plot your results. No problem, you get a nice graph but the numbers on the axis go like this: infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, zero, -infinity, -infinity, -infinity, -infinity. Damn if it can plot the graph, why can't it print the numbers. My experiences have all been frustrating and it certainly isn't worth the effort for most people.

Mathematica - I've barely had the chance to use it. Much easier than Maple from my experience, but it was so limited, I really shouldn't comment.
 
Oh, and if you want to use a copie at home and don't plan on distributing any program made out of it, I would, dare I say it, puouirate it.
 
In my days as a mathematical student, used Macsyma on a very old SPARC station. Surprised it has yet to be mentioned, as it is still quite powerful software. Also of course relied heavily on the programming languages of the time. At that time and since, have experienced nearly all the major derivations (no pun) of mathematical software available (MathCad, Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, Magma, Reduce, Derive, Axiom, and a few others, which my now elderly brain has failed to recall), and nearly all have their place as all of them have advantages and disadvantages.

Suppose one's preference (and really, it boils down to nothing more than that) greatly depends on one's specialization within mathematics. Obviously different applications may be a bit better suited toward one specialization than another. As suggested, better to see which applications are available on campus and readily available prior to purchasing out of one's own pocket. Often licensing agreements allow students to obtain copies of the software used on campus for use at home as well, for little or no cost.

One final note: never allow any of these tools to become a crutch. A majority of the time, they are unnecessary if one grasps the fundamentals well enough. Technology can be a wonderful mechanism in learning, but never at the cost of understanding.
 
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