NE1 into math software? Look at 'Sage'

Here is a link to an open source math software set, rivals Matlab, Mathematica, etc. You can get it on a DVD for about 8 bucks! Or download it direct:
http://sagemath.org

I was looking at some old threads and found this.

Sonhouse, have you tried this yourself? Personally, I use mostly Matlab (as I deal with mostly numerical computations) but every once in a while I need to do more symbolical stuff and resort to Mathematica.

I heard that Sage wasn't that interesting as a Matlab replacement (Octave is quite nice for a pure replacement) so I haven't tried it yet. But Mathematica is too expensive for the use I give it. Would Sage be good as a Mathematica replacement?

I downloaded all the stuff and it is very awkward to use, we use matlab and Labview at work, and of course some of us us mathematica. All of that stuff is too expensive for me anyway. I am still in the HP48 stage, just made 5 programs for an astronomy project I hope to turn into a paper.
The HP48 uses RPL, a reverse Polish Lisp language.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I downloaded all the stuff and it is very awkward to use, we use matlab and Labview at work, and of course some of us us mathematica. All of that stuff is too expensive for me anyway. I am still in the HP48 stage, just made 5 programs for an astronomy project I hope to turn into a paper.
The HP48 uses RPL, a reverse Polish Lisp language.

Did you try Octave? It's a great open-source substitute for Matlab and even mostly compatible.

Originally posted by Palynka
I was looking at some old threads and found this.

Sonhouse, have you tried this yourself? Personally, I use mostly Matlab (as I deal with mostly numerical computations) but every once in a while I need to do more symbolical stuff and resort to Mathematica.

I heard that Sage wasn't that interesting as a Matlab replacement (Octave is quite nice for a pu ...[text shortened]... atica is too expensive for the use I give it. Would Sage be good as a Mathematica replacement?

Does anyone have experience with Python?

I met someone last week who does the same sort of work that I do, much of which is currently in Matlab or FORTRAN, and she had switched from Matlab to Python. She found it superior for what we do, which is data analysis and assimilation (although I mainly just do analysis) of dual Doppler radar data.

Originally posted by Palynka
Did you try Octave? It's a great open-source substitute for Matlab and even mostly compatible.

I like Octave, but I find the graphing control much weaker than Matlab, and I don't find them all that compatible. I usually had to modify Matlab scripts to work in Octave. Although I'd still gladly use it if I didn't get my own copy of Matlab.

Originally posted by convect
I like Octave, but I find the graphing control much weaker than Matlab, and I don't find them all that compatible. I usually had to modify Matlab scripts to work in Octave. Although I'd still gladly use it if I didn't get my own copy of Matlab.

Yes, it's not perfect, but still... it's free. Compared to R, I find it a better replacement. I also have my Matlab copy for now, but I'm not personally paying it...

Originally posted by convect
I like Octave, but I find the graphing control much weaker than Matlab, and I don't find them all that compatible. I usually had to modify Matlab scripts to work in Octave. Although I'd still gladly use it if I didn't get my own copy of Matlab.

Can you do semi log graphics with Octave? I am doing it manually right now, but it would look better for publication to be auto done.
I found a site that gives out free printable log graph paper and lots of other stuff. I went to some sites that lets you print log or semilog paper but it turns out they are sneaky and the result will not copy. This site I just found, freeprinable.net works great, you can specify lines per inch, how many cycles of log you need. I used three cycle, it turned out I could have used 4 but I made do. If I want to bad enough I can go back and have 4 cycle paper printed out. You register, they send an email which you respond to and they send emails with the latest kind of graph paper or business forms, tons of stuff.

Originally posted by Palynka
Did you try Octave? It's a great open-source substitute for Matlab and even mostly compatible.

Did you see the latest version, version 3.0?
I am not sure what to download, the first folder says 'binaries'. Is that the one to download or do you have to do the whole page? Why isn't it all in one place, one big download?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Can you do semi log graphics with Octave? I am doing it manually right now, but it would look better for publication to be auto done.
I found a site that gives out free printable log graph paper and lots of other stuff. I went to some sites that lets you print log or semilog paper but it turns out they are sneaky and the result will not copy. This site I j ...[text shortened]... nd to and they send emails with the latest kind of graph paper or business forms, tons of stuff.

http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Specialized-Two_002dDimensional-Plots.html#index-semilogx-753

semilogx or semilogy should do it, but it's been awhile since I used Octave for graphing.

I use Matlab and Maple but wouldn't like to learn another code... and I don't need to anyways since I don't have to pay for licenses.

Originally posted by convect
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Specialized-Two_002dDimensional-Plots.html#index-semilogx-753

semilogx or semilogy should do it, but it's been awhile since I used Octave for graphing.

I just downloaded Octave, but the site says I only downloaded the windows installer. Is that true, I have not really downloaded the main bang yet? I get a command line, is that all there is to it? I see tutorials also but not sure if I have the whole thing and if not, what do I do to get the whole thing?

Originally posted by sonhouse
I just downloaded Octave, but the site says I only downloaded the windows installer. Is that true, I have not really downloaded the main bang yet? I get a command line, is that all there is to it? I see tutorials also but not sure if I have the whole thing and if not, what do I do to get the whole thing?

Did you try some commands in that command line? They should work. If you know Matlab try some of those. You can try to find some extra packages for what interests you in particular.

Apparently, there is a frontend for a more graphical interface, but I haven't tried it.

Originally posted by Palynka
I was looking at some old threads and found this.

Sonhouse, have you tried this yourself? Personally, I use mostly Matlab (as I deal with mostly numerical computations) but every once in a while I need to do more symbolical stuff and resort to Mathematica.

I heard that Sage wasn't that interesting as a Matlab replacement (Octave is quite nice for a pu ...[text shortened]... atica is too expensive for the use I give it. Would Sage be good as a Mathematica replacement?

I think that for a free matlab replacement http://www.scilab.org/ is the best solution. But I don't really know since I never used matlab nor scilab but remember a teacher of mine praising it.

http://www.neng.usu.edu/cee/faculty/gurro/Scilab.html is supposedly a great help in getting started with scilab.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I just downloaded Octave, but the site says I only downloaded the windows installer. Is that true, I have not really downloaded the main bang yet? I get a command line, is that all there is to it? I see tutorials also but not sure if I have the whole thing and if not, what do I do to get the whole thing?

I only know of the command-line interface. Both at home and at the computers at work, octave is command-line. You can write a script for it and run the script from the command line...IIRC, the scripts themselves can even be run from the command-line (at least on Unix-type systems).