Mathematica

For starters, i'm a programmer through and through, and don't know much math anymore (haven't done anything more than algebra and trig since i finished M4 freshman year)

I personally have never liked mathematica. We had to use it in some of my classes in school, and it always felt like some huge monstrosity that i couldn't quite figure out. In other classes, we used Matlab which seemed to be able to do just as much, but IMO had a much better, cleaner interface. I actually used it for my senior project - an artificial neural network used to predict outbreaks of various viruses and such based solely on the tests doctors were running, and not the results (most of the tests we were using as indicators would take 2-3 weeks to come back with results)... It worked out very, very well for us, and even validated our assumption that doctors subconsciously know what you have before they order the tests - there were 2 or 3 combinations of tests that indicated something like a 98% chance of having a particular illness.

Anyways, i found matlab to be great, but i can't guarantee that it'll completely suit your needs from the short description you gave.

 

Have you worked with Mathematica before? If not, you should at atleast give it a try before purchasing if it costs $2K. Are you affiliated with a university/student? There is a student version which sells for much cheaper. Matlab is also good.

 

I'm gonna go with eagle here. I used Mathematica in my Aircraft Vibrations (also known as advanced differential equations) class, and 99% of the class felt that it was a huge waste of time (The 1% or less of the class that liked it was the professor).

The GUI is ridiculously basic, you pretty much have to learn the Mathematica programming language to use it properly, and a lot of the things we were forced to use it on would have been much easier on my TI-89 calculator. If you don't type the commands with the exact spacing and use of () or [] the program simply gives a general error. It offers no insight as to whether the error is grammatical or mathematical.

I absolutely hate it. and to top it all off, our 4 hour final was based solely on Mathematica calculations. at least I passed!!

I also have some limited experience with Matlab from work. From my initial exposure, it looks much more user friendly and quite a bit more versatile with the ability of writing scripts in a much more general program language (english, mostly :lol: ).

 

We're pretty heavily IDL based, moving towards Python (with NumPy plug-in). Free.

 

Nothing is forever.

At some point an upgrade is going to negate this program. $2,000? How badly do you need it and is there anything else that can do the same thing for less?

 

Mathematica is OK if you really know what you're doing.

Matlab, Mathcad, and even Maple are better in my opinion.


Michgal is right about the ones you can pick up at the
college. Just be careful. Most come with EULA's
strictly prohibiting commercial use*. :mellow:

If you're leaning towards low cost, try SciLab, Octave,
or Maxima. They're free.


*Except for the makers of Matlab. I think they
want to prohibit any use whatsoever. Hidden
in the EULA is the phrase, "Upon graduation from
school, quitting school, or blinking for more
than 3 seconds, do not worry about uninstalling
the application. Our hired goons will be over
soon to do it for you." :lol:

 

Prefer Mathcad for genuine math esp symbolics.

IDL for broader applications, probably more desirable to the C enthusiasts also.

Mathematica was foisted upon me as an undergrad, but preferred Macsyma (still available?) as a CLI app.

 

I'm surprised no one has mentioned SAS?

There is a evaluation version that will let you work with less than like 150 records. But you'd have to learn the syntax, but if you are a cs guy it should be easy.

 

Another Mathcad proponent here.. Mathcad does support programming, but the general feel is basically a pad of paper where you write down your equations and magically find them solved for you.. It uses Maple for its symbolics engine and its very intuitive math-base GUI makes it easy to write complex equations just like you would see them in a text book without resorting to text notation on a single long line with dozens of pairs of brackets..

Mathcad is also great for its extensibillity and integration with other products... You can very easily write your own functions in C, and there are various simulation toolkits that link in seamlessly (VisSim comes bundled with Mathcad and is a fairly capable package).

I've also used Matlab in the past and honestly didn't like it- too much like programming, and no symbolics. As its name implies, virtually everything about the program is oriented around arrays and matrices, which were my worst subject in University, so that probably contributed to my dislike of the tool, but for those who do like it, Mathcad now supports Matlab as a plug-in, so you can use all the Matlab scripts, toolkits and functions, with a superior Mathcad front-end.

Mathematica and Macsyma were great tools for their day, but there's a reason why they have all but fallen by the wayside.. Mathematica had great graphics in their advertisments, which was its primary attraction, but I found it rather a chore to actually use the tool; even Macsyma was quite a bit more "intuitive" to me..



For quick-and-dirty symbolic math, I still love Derive though- I've got an old MS-DOS copy that still runs in a window or on my old HP100LX that turns it into the smallest and most advanced symbolic computing platform around..

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bigdaddy @ Mar 26 2007, 03:43 PM) [snapback]412568[/snapback]</div>

Interactive Data Language. Very common in research communities. Very efficient with large vector/array operations.

http://www.ittvis.com/idl/

It uses a high level language that is "C-like" and can call external C and Fortran which is handy. Strong graphic abilities. I have never called an IDL procedure externally although I believe that's possible. Take a tour from the URL above.

 

Jumping in late to this thread- I'm an applied mathematcian/marine scientist (I do computational modeling of the ocean). I have used Mathematica in the past, but it has been awhile so I'm not up to speed on the current release. I use Matlab a lot and would suggest giving it a try. There are a lot of toolboxes available for Matlab, and they now offer a symbolic math toolbox based on the Maple 10 kernel. It also allows the option of outputting to LaTex, which is useful for writing papers. Because I have an academic affiliation, I was able to get the student version of Matlab for next to nothing so that I can work at home, and it does everything that I need it to do (although I guess there is a caveat if you are developing a commercial application). If you go to the mathworks.com website, you can see demos of the various toolboxes and capabilities.
BTW, eagle, I used to do a lot of work with neural networks (not much in recent years). Matlab has a decent neural net toolbox, although I mostly programmed my own back then.