Re: Thinking of buying some math software

[Ken Caviness <caviness@SOUTHERN.EDU>]

Mathematica is the flagship program for symbolic & numeric manipulation, with
good graphics as well.  If there's anything mathematical that a math/science
undergraduate student wants to do which Mathematica doesn't have already built
in, I certainly haven't heard of it.  It's also a full-featured computer
language as well, knows all common and uncommon mathematical functions,
supports procedural, functional and rule-based programming styles.

Regarding the price:  $1880 is indeed steep for the commercial version.  For
teachers, the academic price of $895 still seems high, but the student price
of $140 should be more interesting (at least in comparison) to you.

There's a wide field of programs to choose from, which might serve your
purposes quite well:  More and more programs are adding symbolic manipulation,
for instance as does Scientific Workshop & Notebook by including the Maple (or
another) engine.  Maple itself is generally recognized as being Mathematica's
main "competition", with much of the same basic functionality and a cheaper
price tag.  But for putting the full power and flexibility in your hands,
Mathematica is tops.  It also keeps getting easier to use:  there are palettes
you can click and keyboard shortcuts to set up formulas instead of typing
things out like we used to do, and most commands have standard options set as
default to do what you probably want to do, but allowing you to override and
get _exactly_ what you want when you want to.

Anyway, for the long haul I wouldn't choose anything but Mathematica, but let
me warn you:  I myself am not an unbiased observer.  I've used Mathematica
since Dos version 1.0, and have experimented with Maple, Scientific Notebook,
MathCAD, and others.  Part of it is certainly that once you get used to one
program others will seem more difficult to use in comparison, but I don't
think that's all of it.  For instance, right know I'm working on a project
which needed a rather tricky manipulation of the internal representation of a
graphics object.  Child's play in Mathematica, but I see no way to do it with
the other programs I've tried.

By the way, if calculus visualizations are your main interest, consider
"Calculus Whiz", a Mathematica front end specifically set up to do calculus.
They've got an online demo to give you an idea how it works:
<http://www.wolfram.com/products/student/calcwiz/>

All the best,

Ken Caviness

"J. Green" wrote:

> I can't figure out exactly what software package is more useful.  Actually,
> I'm having trouble seeing exactly what they all can do.  I was wondering,
> out of those of you who use software (math or physics or what have you),
> what you use, what you use it for, and what you would suggest to someone
> investigating the situation.  I was thinking it would be nice to have
> something that would help me learn higher calculus, but would also have more
> use after I go through my classes.  BTW, what makes mathematica pro worth
> $1,800????
> Thanks in advance,
> J Green
> Humble Physics Student