3 awesome free Math programs
Mathematical software can be very expensive. Programs like Mathematica, Maple and Matlab are incredibly powerful, flexible and usually well documented and supported. Their price tags however are a big let down for many people, even if there are cheap (in some cases crippled) versions available for educational purposes (if you are a student or a teacher). The secondary disadvantages are those caused by the fact that such programs are proprietary. This can also affect or limit a “sharing oriented” environment like the academic and research fields. In this short article I propose well known programs that will give you a lot of flexibility and math crunching fun. And with no cost, they are great for all the different careers with a math degree. All of them have advantages and drawbacks and none of them can be considered perfect or infallible, but I consider them some of the best available today in their respective categories. They are rather general purpose softwares, but there are plenty of other specialized open source programs if you have specific needs. I’ve chosen one program for each of the 3 macro categories: symbolic, numeric and statistical computing, but you can expect quite a bit of overlapping and shared functionalities. Try the three of them, try the suggested alternatives and settle with the ones that you like and that meet your needs the best.
1. Maxima
A general purpose CAS (Computer Algebra System) is a program that’s able to perform symbolic manipulation for the resolution of common problems. As a matter of fact, modern CAS covers an extremely wide range of functionalities. Maple is a prime example of a commercial CAS software. In this category I’d say that Maxima is an excellent open source cross platform tool. wxMaxima is a good GUI version (possibly the best one on Windows), but other front-ends exist. The 3D plot below was generated by Maxima.
Valuable mentions are:
2. Scilab
Matlab is the standard for numerical computing, but there are a few clones and valid alternatives that are entirely free. Scilab is the closest that you can get to Matlab without spending a penny. It’s very compatible with Matlab (albeit not 100%) but it’s really flexible, powerful and comes with a Matlab converter and Scicos which is a block diagram modeler and simulator.
Valid alternatives are:
3. R
For statistical computing and analysis in the Open Source world, it doesn’t get any better than R. It is a programming language and environment that enables you to do pretty much anything that the commercial software (S-Plus) does. It is so widely adopted that it can be considered a standard in the field.
As usual, please feel free to share your experiences and add your suggestions to enrich the discussion.
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All very good stuff here.
Has anyone seen Mathematica Demonstrations, now free online and IMHO powerful? I think they and their free Integrate show the way ahead for all of Mathematica ie give it away Adobe style. Their corporate fees from uni’s and commercial users must be enough to float their massive and science-shaping enterprise, plus fund the media areas they need to get into to share the social science advances they make.
That said, the FLOSS math programs are brilliant for all the good reasons. I have just one hesitation: time spent re-inventing low level stuff by math folk who could be doing cutting edge stuff that would benefit themselves and all of us. (Do we stop discovering things by 25?) The counter-argument is also true: if we allow the cathedral to be the only inventor, our brains narrow. Luckily we have free will and live for now on a very rich planet, so can afford both approaches.
But let’s keep an eye on the other ball as well. Luckily able people work so quickly they can use both well, and this multi-tasking stimulates ideas.
It is designed for more than just Math, but offering Scientific and other Units for Java, JScience (http://www.jscience.org) also is a very useful framework for Mathematics.
There are other Scientific and Mathematic libraries built on top of it.
See the JScience website for more information.
[...] 50,000 people read my article 3 awesome free Math programs. Chances are that at least some of them downloaded and installed Maxima. If you are one of them but [...]
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no mention of PARI GP?!
[...] 3 awesome free Math programs Including Maxima, Scilab, and R. I haven’t ever used any of apps mentioned besides Octave. (tags: math software opensource freeware) [...]
[...] programas te cuestan una pasta, así que mejor que tirar de programas OpenSource gratuitos. Como las tres soluciones que nos propone Antonio Cangiano en su blog Math-blog (vía [...]
Best soft for data analysis (aka. numerical computations) is programmed by CERN particle accelerator physicists themselfs – ROOT.
CERN LHC collider will generate data about some Petabytes / year. This data should be analysed by physicists. What program should be able to do this job better than ROOT ?
http://root.cern.ch/
Hi
I must do graphs and translations. Geometer Sketchpad is very good, but not open source. Do you know of any such program?
Rika
@rika
Hi Rika,
try GeoGebra and take a look at this list of software on Wikipedia.
Does anyone know whether there is a pdf version of the Maxima manual?
[...] 3 awesome free Math programs Mathematical software can be very expensive. Mathematica, Maple and Matlab are incredibly powerful, flexible and usually well documented and supported. Their price tags however are a big let down even if there are cheap (in some cases crippled) versions (tags: math software mathematics freeware opensource) [...]
[...] http://math-blog.com/2007/06/02/3-awesome-free-math-programs/ [...]
I agree with u, these are wonderful programs.
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This is very good.It will be usefull to me.
Thanks for sharing these open source softwares.
I’m a little surprised that the links you included for math software (Mathematica, Maple and [sic] Matlab) led to Wikipedia, rather than the software vendors’ Web pages, such as this one for MATLAB:
http://www.mathworks.com/
-Will
Does one of these programs is capable of solving partial differential equations [both analytically and numerically] and plotting their graphs? [I'm especially interested in wave equation and Schroedinger equation].
Perfect choice of programs.
The only comment I have is about scilab – I use it (and can use it) because I know Matlab inside out and scilab is quite similar.
The only aspect in which Matlab is greatly superior to scilab is documentation. I think if I had started using scilab the same way I started Matlab (essentially self-taught, just had to solve some programming problems in a lab), in spite of some programming experience I would probably have not gotten far because of lacking documentation and examples, abundant in the Matlab help.
The program itself is just as good …
Very cool – thanks!
Grapher on OS X is pretty sweet too.
This realy helped me
thanks!
Does any of these freewares do dimensional analysis?
[...] 3 awesome free Math programs | Math-Blog [...]
hi,
In the finance industry, which is the preferred CAS/numerical computing software
by both quant engineers and/or software developers ?
Thanks in advance.
[...] 参考链接：http://math-blog.com/2007/06/02/3-awesome-free-math-programs/ [...]
hi,
In the finance industry, which is the preferred CAS/numerical computing software
by both quant engineers and/or software developers ?
Thanks in advance.
Gracias por el articulo
i have a big problem here, since i used newton rhapson methode for calculate:
Y = a^(1/n)….,where “a” is arbitary number
including complex number, while “n” is every positive numbers.
i can’t use the first guest number by 0 (zero).
why does matlab can’t do this?
i think there is some mistake in matlab work.
@andre
I ever meet similar problem at this address
http://eqworld.ipmnet.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34&start=30
@andre and all,
OMG.. I’ve missed in submitting the above information, I mean at this address :
http://math152.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/interesting-proof-by-contradiction/#comment-255
Apologise so much.
Denaya Lesa.
[...] http://math-blog.com/2007/06/02/3-awesome-free-math-programs/ [...]
[...] http://math-blog.com/2007/06/02/3-awesome-free-math-programs/ [...]
[...] 3 awesome free Math programs | Math-Blog Mathematical software can be very expensive. Programs like Mathematica, Maple and Matlab are incredibly powerful, flexible and usually well documented and supported. Their price tags however are a big let down for many people, even if there are cheap (in some cases crippled) versions available for educational purposes (if you are a student or a teacher). The secondary disadvantages are those caused by the fact that such programs are proprietary. This can also affect or limit a “sharing oriented” environment like the academic and research fields. In this short article I propose well known programs that will give you a lot of flexibility and math crunching fun. And with no cost, they are great for all the different careers with a math degree. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Open Source MathTop Open Source Mathematical ProgramsFree Software – MathematicsBuild It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work? [...]
For analysts who want to do pretty serious regression-related analysis but not learn R, GRETL is an excellent open-source alternative.
It can be used as a front-end to R, as well as standalone.
Several years ago I owned a Mathamatica package. At that time I was using a Mac computer. I have long sense moved to PC’s. Primarily because of the better quality and lower price. I miss my math program much more than my Mac. I use Mathcad now. But there is no comparison. As a Social Scientist, much of my research is statistical in nature. As an amature Astronomer I do enjoy calculatng the orbits of near earth objects.
Since a disablying accident 10 years ago I have more time then money. So any good low cost or free mathamatical modeling programs are very much appreciated.
great help.I looking for something like this for my seminary work.
Python,as a language or anything else,is really a very good tool ,with a lot of open source package.So why not try Python.
I was after a good 3D graph program, having had no success with WolframAlpha. Some of the bigger programs you suggest gave me trouble in installing for various reasons (probably my fault). But I hit upon Graphing Calculator 3D which worked fine. You can even move your viewpoint to any direction by dragging with the mouse pointer. The free version does not allow you to save or print results, but you can use printscreen (on WindowsXP) and paste it into any program.
Graphing Calculator 3D, as pointed out by Don, is a great alternative to the more complicated software such as Maple. When designing Graphing Calculator 3D we tried to focus on the most commonly used features, hence it is much easier and quicker to use. In addition, the 3D graphs produced by this 3D grapher are much nicer than those of other tools due to the extensive use of graphics card rendering hardware facilities which includes shading, light reflections and transparency.
Regards,
Dr. Saeid Nourian
President of Runiter Company
http://calculator.runiter.com/
hi,
In wxMaxima Linux, I try assume(x>0);solve( x^2-4)
but it gives x=-2 and x=+2 , but why doesn’t it respect the context and just give x=2?
I’m not aware of an built-in, easy solution and you can’t use assume like that. See: http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/2006/003702.html
I use the three math software listed above for teaching Civil and Environmental Engineering courses. MAXIMA for symbolic calculations, SCILAB for numerical calculations, and R for statistical applications. In the last year and a half I’ve also been using SMath Studio, a paper-like application for mostly numerical calculations, but with some basic symbolic calculations. Here’s the website for the most current (although, still “beta”) version:
http://en.smath.info/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=643
Gilberto Urroz
I am looking for a PC equivalent of an iOS app that shows a line of consequtive numbers, where you can put a marker between them, and go into closer details, showing more and more decimals.
This is great for younger students that do not know how to round of decimals correctly yet.
Anyone know about such a program?
Geogebra is another powerful website as well
Though it is not a general purpose math program, it is free and very useful for researchers in Group Theory and permutations:
GAP – http://www.gap-system.org
This is what I was looking for. Maxima is awesome. Thank you so much for the information.