HP Forum Archive 17

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AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #1 Posted by BruceH on 25 Oct 2007, 10:35 a.m. An editorial in the current Notices of the American Mathematical Society calls for only open source mathematical software to be used. Quote: I think we need a symbolic standard to make computer manipulations easier to document and verify. And with all due respect to the free market, perhaps we should not be dependent on commercial software here. An open source project could, perhaps, find better answers to the obvious problems such as availability, bugs, backward compatibility, platform independence, standard libraries, etc. One can learn from the success of TEX and more specialized software like Macaulay2. I do hope that funding agencies are looking into this. Andrei Okounkov, 2006 Fields medalist.

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #2 Posted by Namir on 25 Oct 2007, 11:16 a.m., in response to message #1 by BruceH The French have SciLab which is a freeware MatLab-like software. there is also R, an open source clone of the S-Plus statistical language. A better clone of MatLab is certainly welcome. Namir

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #3 Posted by Eric Smith on 25 Oct 2007, 1:29 p.m., in response to message #2 by Namir Don't you like Octave?

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #4 Posted by Namir on 25 Oct 2007, 1:32 p.m., in response to message #3 by Eric Smith Octave is good too!!! :=) Namir

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #5 Posted by Eric Smith on 25 Oct 2007, 1:52 p.m., in response to message #4 by Namir But doesn't it qualify as "a better clone of MATLAB"?

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #6 Posted by Namir on 25 Oct 2007, 2:04 p.m., in response to message #5 by Eric Smith I don't know for sure. Has anyone used Octave and can give a first-hand testimony? Namir

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #7 Posted by Eric Smith on 25 Oct 2007, 4:49 p.m., in response to message #6 by Namir I've used Octave, but I've never used MATLAB, so I can't offer a comparison. The Octave web site says that it is mostly compatible, and describes the areas in which Octave differs from MATLAB. It has some features MATLAB doesn't, but is also missing some MATLAB features.

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #8 Posted by Thomas Chrapkiewicz on 25 Oct 2007, 10:04 p.m., in response to message #7 by Eric Smith I had repeatedly attempted to use Octave (a couple years ago), but it was missing some very key features, such as having two plots open simultaneously. I contacted the author, who indicated that it could be fixed, but he did not yet have time to dedicate to the fix. TomCee

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #9 Posted by Alain Mellan on 25 Oct 2007, 11:16 p.m., in response to message #8 by Thomas Chrapkiewicz Depending on what you need to do, Pylab http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ may be a good alternative. Python's syntax is close enough to Matlab, and it has a number of scientific libraries. I can't comment too much on that part, as I'm using mostly the plotting libraries. -- alain. Edited: 25 Oct 2007, 11:17 p.m.

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #10 Posted by Khanh-Dang Nguyen Thu-Lam on 30 Oct 2007, 7:41 p.m., in response to message #8 by Thomas Chrapkiewicz I use both Matlab and Octave (just take care to use a recent version of the 2.9.x branch), through not as an advanced user. They are very similar, even for graphic commands. The Octave I tested can open two plots simultaneously. Actually, I even find Octave better, e.g. the sinc command is already available in the default distribution of Octave, whereas you have to rewrite it when using Matlab (to avoid the issue of sinc(x)=sin(pi.x)/(pi.x) when x=0).

Re: AMS Calls for open source mathematical software Message #11 Posted by Namir on 25 Oct 2007, 2:48 p.m., in response to message #5 by Eric Smith Here is a link to a list of numerical analysis software. Namir

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