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Re: [Phys-l] plotting software?



On Oct 8, 2007, at Oct 8:12:42 PM, kyle forinash wrote:

Can anyone point me to software that will make nicer graphs than Excel
or Graphical Analysis but doesn't cost as much as SigmaPlot or Origin? I
don't need a lot of bells and whistles, just some nice quality graphs...

Personally, I have used python with matplotlib, especially when coming from Matlab. It is free, extremely customizable, and the combination of python/scipy/numpy with matplotlib gives a reasonable replacement for 90% of matlab's graphing functionality (only exception I found is 3d plots), and 150% of matlab's programming functionality. You can find a presentation on python for numerical computing here:

http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais/bryant/numerical_computing/


I have used python very successfully in a number of classes I teach, both in physics and non-physics, for majors and non-majors.


Brian Blais


--
Brian Blais
bblais@bryant.edu
http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais