Recom on Mathcad/Mathematica

["Ivan E. Rouse" <irouse@LASIERRA.EDU>]

Greetings Physicists and others:

Our campus computer lab coordinator who is responsible for software
purchases etc recently sent out the following message to the math and
science faculty:

> I'm trying to gather your thoughts about migrating from MathCad to
> Mathematica. For several years now we've been using MathCad as a teaching
> tool; MathSoft has revised its pricing policy to ensure that they get a
> constant stream of cash in "subscription fees". Mathematica has better
> symbolic manipulation and 3D rendering capabilities than MathCad.
> Furthermore, Mathematica has been keeping up with technological advances on
> the Macintosh platform.
>
> On the minus side, a campus-wide switch from MathCad to Mathematica will
> require those of you currently using MathCad to switch to a another
> software you may not be familiar with. Perhaps it may be a good idea to
> hang on to our copies of MathCad 6 or 7 while we purchase new copies of
> Mathematica 4.0. What are your thoughts about this?

Our department has been using Mathcad for quite some time for a wide
variety of our service courses and major classes and have been generally
quite happy with it.  Our perception is that it is quite capable and that
the learning curve is not too steep.

What are your experiences with Mathcad or Mathematica or other tools for
use with science majors and with general students?

Possible questions:
How does the ease of use compare?
How steep is the learning curve for each?
        -can it be easily used by someone that does not know programming?
Can you comment on the relative symbolic and graphic capabilities?
Ability to interface easily with other common software tools such as MS
Word and MS Excel?
Which is the most widely used in academia vs industry?
Would your responses depend on the type of student?

Your responses would be the most instructive if you include:
        Teachiing level (college, high school and lower division vs upper div.))
        Computer platform (PC vs Mac)
        Software version numbers used

Ivan Rouse, Professor and Chair
Physics Department, La Sierra University
4700 Pierce St., Riverside, CA 92515
email: irouse@lasierra.edu
web: http://physics.lasierra.edu/irouse/
phone: 909-785-2137, FAX 909-785-2215