Poll:Mathematica vs Maple

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: dullard
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.

MatLAB, huh?

It looks pretty cool. High-quality graphing is important. It's $99, which isn't too bad.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
MatLAB, huh?

It looks pretty cool. High-quality graphing is important. It's $99, which isn't too bad.

I suppose I should have added that you need to enjoy computer programing to really use MatLAB well. Do you like programming?

 

[Mareg]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: dullard
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.

MatLAB, huh?

It looks pretty cool. High-quality graphing is important. It's $99, which isn't too bad.

Then you can't go wrong with MatLab. It produces the most amazing graph. It can go 3D too with the plot and plot3d functions !

 

[Mareg]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
MatLAB, huh?

It looks pretty cool. High-quality graphing is important. It's $99, which isn't too bad.

I suppose I should have added that you need to enjoy computer programing to really use MatLAB well. Do you like programming?

For the programming part, MatLab include a very usefull help that gives many exemples of how to call the fonctions and their results.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
MatLAB, huh?

It looks pretty cool. High-quality graphing is important. It's $99, which isn't too bad.

I suppose I should have added that you need to enjoy computer programing to really use MatLAB well. Do you like programming?

Do I like programming? No a whole lot.

Do I mind programming to get what I need to do done? Not at all.

I'm writing a program in C to determine whether a number is the sum of two cubes. I just need to get it to correctly support 64-bit integers.

 

[Chaotic42]

Also, the way I look at it, at $100 each, it's not like I can only ever buy one of them.

 

[element]

I used MathCAD back when I was getting my BSEE (graduated in 97) it was pretty sweet. I hear good things abouit Maple, I don't remember if I used it but if I did it may have been only once or twice.

I used matlab too but as you know matlab is different. (non symbolic when I used it but things may have changed since then)

MathCAD was great though. I remember throwing anything at it and it solving symbolically, which was a great help on many a problem. I loved how it even showed all the steps to solving the problem.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: element
I loved how it even showed all the steps to solving the problem.

Now that's a nice feature. If I don't understand the problem, it shows the steps.

I like that.

 

[Mareg]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: element
I loved how it even showed all the steps to solving the problem.

Now that's a nice feature. If I don't understand the problem, it shows the steps.

I like that.

Matlab can show you the trace. Maple do it to I think.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Mareg
Matlab can show you the trace. Maple do it to I think.

That's cool.

I'm not going to use this stuff to do my homework, just to get a better idea of what's going on.

 

[sciencewhiz]

oops

 

[Chaotic42]

When you guys say symbolic, you mean it will reduce equations to other equations? Like indefinite integrals and stuff, right?

 

[Rallispec]

We use Matlab a lot where i work for engineering type things. Plus it has the Simulink addon which is great for doing simulations and we get tons of use out of.

I've never used maple or mathmatica, but understand they are more for symbolic math.

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
When you guys say symbolic, you mean it will reduce equations to other equations? Like indefinite integrals and stuff, right?

i think so

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Rallispec
We use Matlab a lot where i work for engineering type things. Plus it has the Simulink addon which is great for doing simulations and we get tons of use out of.

I've never used maple or mathmatica, but understand they are more for symbolic math.

So you're happy with Matlab? How much of a system does it need to run? Do you know if it's SMP capable?

By the way, where have you been? I haven't seen you post since the 'Goodnight' thread.

 

[Rallispec]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: Rallispec
We use Matlab a lot where i work for engineering type things. Plus it has the Simulink addon which is great for doing simulations and we get tons of use out of.

I've never used maple or mathmatica, but understand they are more for symbolic math.

So you're happy with Matlab? How much of a system does it need to run? Do you know if it's SMP capable?

By the way, where have you been? I haven't seen you post since the 'Goodnight' thread.

working working and more working... i'll probably be back around more now though, becuase i just switched jobs and now a little more free time to play online 🙂


anyhow, matlab runs fine on the p3 800 i'm using right now. I dont think its 'that' much of a processor hog.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
When you guys say symbolic, you mean it will reduce equations to other equations? Like indefinite integrals and stuff, right?

Yes that is what they mean by symbolic. For example, in Mathcad you can type this:

x^2+y

Click on the x and press the integrate button and you get this result:

(1/3)*x^3+y*x

Or if you instead clicked on the y you'd get this after hitting the integrate button:

x^2*y+(1/2)*y^2

Note: many programs leave off the constant of integration, so you still need to know what you are doing. Many programs other than Mathcad will do the same thing (but with additional user inputs). Symbolic programs makes things like equation simplification, partial fractions, Laplace transforms, Taylor expansions, etc very simple.

No programs are significant processor hogs by themselves - for simple or medium complexity daily tasks. You could always give it a very complex problem and bring any computer to its knees with any of those programs.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: dullard
Note: many programs leave off the constant of integration, so you still need to know what you are doing. Many programs other than Mathcad will do the same thing (but with additional user inputs). Symbolic programs makes things like equation simplification, partial fractions, Laplace transforms, Taylor expansions, etc very simple.

No programs are significant processor hogs by themselves - for simple or medium complexity daily tasks. You could always give it a very complex problem and bring any computer to its knees with any of those programs.

That sounds cool.

I think I'll give Matlab a shot.

 

[Chaotic42]

Ok, I bought Matlab. Now I just have to drive 70 miles one way to pick it up.