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From: | Jonathan Stickel |
Subject: | CASs vs. octave numerics (was: Re: Symbolic expand function doesn't always do anything) |
Date: | Tue, 14 Sep 2004 10:23:22 -0700 |
User-agent: | Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.3 (X11/20040803) |
edA-qa mort-ora-y wrote:
Jonathan Stickel wrote:Have you considered using a true CAS, e.g. Maxima? Or do you interface your symbolic results with octave numerics?My main use of such a system has always been numerics, but now I seem to be going into the realm of symbolics a lot more (always needing numeric solutions at the end though).I must admit though, I truly don't understand why there is a separation between tools such as Octave and Maxima. Why would I choose to use one over the other?
I've been troubled by this as well. For the most part, though, I use a CAS to arrive at formulas which I then use for numerical calculations. I'd love to see an example where one interfaces symbolic manipulation with numerical methods, but from my experience they are often completely separate.
CASs can do numerics, but their available routines are often slow, cumbersome, and incomplete compared to Matlab/Octave. To be honest, Mathematica seems to do both symbolics and numerics very well, but it certainly is not free. Since my symbolic needs are small, I've found Maxima to be adequate, but I do my numerical work in Octave.
Jonathan ------------------------------------------------------------- Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL. Octave's home on the web: http://www.octave.org How to fund new projects: http://www.octave.org/funding.html Subscription information: http://www.octave.org/archive.html -------------------------------------------------------------
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