We don't have any real need for it, but for a while now my wife and I have been kicking around the idea of getting a copy of Mathematica, mostly just for fun. I was poking around and discovered that "Matlab & Simulink" is *less*expensive* than Mathematica [$130 for the latter, $100 for the former]. Is Matlab "a good thing"? Will it do the sort of symbolic-computing and graphing that Mathematica will? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--
On 8/21/07, Bernie Cosell <bernie@fantasyfarm.com> wrote:
Will it do the sort of symbolic-computing and graphing that Mathematica will?
It's not a symbolic algebra package. It can do pretty graphs. Think of it as something like C or Pascal but with built-in matrix multiplication and some graphics primitives.
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--
New Zealand's the place for you: 4M people, 30 M sheep. (And 1M live in Auckland, so anywhere else you go is a small town.) -- Mike Stay metaweta@gmail.com http://math.ucr.edu/~mike
Bernie Cosell wrote:
We don't have any real need for it, but for a while now my wife and I have been kicking around the idea of getting a copy of Mathematica, mostly just for fun. I was poking around and discovered that "Matlab & Simulink" is *less*expensive* than Mathematica [$130 for the latter, $100 for the former]. Is Matlab "a good thing"? Will it do the sort of symbolic-computing and graphing that Mathematica will?
Disclaimer: I work at The Mathworks, purveyors of Matlab. Matlab is a numerical programming language and environment, including a lot of interactive graphics. We do sell an add-on called the "Symbolic Math Toolbox" -- it is a core Maple engine with an interface so you can talk to the Maple engine from Matlab. But that isn't what you're getting in the base Matlab, nor is it what you want if your primary interest is the symbolic computations. John
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