Maple or Mathematica

I''ve use Maple, had a student edition several years ago when I was working on my Ph.D. Never really played with Mathematica. But, Maple used to be primarily good for symbolic math and not so much numerical math, while Mathematica was better a numerical math (as was/is Matlab). I think Maple now does numerical and symbolic math, so maybe its more of a well-rounded competitor to Mathematica and Matlab. I do seem to recall that Mathematica always was supposed to be sort of the "rock star" of the mathematical software packages. Whatever that means. Really, I don''t think you could go wrong with either.

The following site looks immensely useful in making a decision such as this:

http://amath.colorado.edu/computing/mmm/

Provides direct syntax and functionality comparisons of Maple, Mathematic, and Matlab (and IDL). I wonder how Mathcad fits in?

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Good link.

Thanks a bunch!

It''s funny, our math department forces the students to learn and use Maple because its developer is an alumni. It works very well so I''m not complaining.

Wow. At Angelo State U, we have both Maple and Mathmatica. All of the professors prefer Maple though. We have some really cool maple animations showing limits, derivatives, series, etc etc. They really help you get a feel for the concepts behind the math. (So they tell me, anyway.) If I were going to pick one, I''d pick Maple for a lack of knowledge about the others. Ignorance is bliss. (Though, mathomatic by George Gesslein is really kinda nice for algebra problems)

On a seperate note: where do you go, Zipster?

Scout

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All polynomials are funny - some to a higher degree.
Furthermore, polynomials of degree zero are constantly funny.

I use mathematica myself (student license from my uni). A friend of mine plays around with Maple, and He says Maple does a better job integrating / solving differential equations.

Both Maple and Mathematica do symbolic math, and I think both of them do numerical math (I know Mathematica does).

I think they''re comparable.

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[ Galactic Conquest | Bananas | My dead site | www.sgi.com | Goegel ]

I''ve never used Maple (well, I used it for about 5 minutes to play around with once), but I used Mathematica quite a bit last semester, and I really liked it. From what I know, you can''t really go wrong with either.

quote:

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Original post by MrScout
On a seperate note: where do you go, Zipster?

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University of Pennsylvania. At least I hear an alumni developed Maple, which is why we have to learn it.

I thought Maple was developed in Canada (hence the Maple leaf).

Matlab is nice for Diff Eq when you have dfield and pplane
installed. This has been said but I agree that Maple is better
for symbolic manipulation.

We thought my math professor was slow ... turns out he was
from Canada (eh).

TT

Yeah, I forgot about dfield and pplane... Those are great tools, which of course, are only available for Matlab. I''m sure that similar things exist for the others as well, though, just not as well known.

For symbolic manipulation there is also the symbolic toolbox for Matlab. If i am not totaly wrong it is built on the maple symbolic core, but plugged into Matlab.

Myself i use only matlab, but thats becouse i got a student version from the uni i attended (a short while
As with most high-end software i don''t really think it matters that much exactly which tool you ues, the big difference is in knowing your tool and using it correct way...

Both are damn good packages and both extendable with libs etc you can get/write if you like. I use maple, it can be very frustrating, the output it gives you when it cant do something is cryptic at best but where it really comes into its own is writing procedures. You can create quite complex routines to solve all manner of problems in a language with a very simple syntax.

It does seem that Maple is pretty much the standard for educational use. It''s developed at Waterloo uni in Ontario I think.

quote:

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Original post by thebolt00
If i am not totaly wrong it is built on the maple symbolic core, but plugged into Matlab.

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I believe you are correct. At least this used to be the case.

quote:

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Original post by thebolt00
Myself i use only matlab, but thats becouse i got a student version from the uni i attended (a short while
As with most high-end software i don''t really think it matters that much exactly which tool you ues, the big difference is in knowing your tool and using it correct way...

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As far as I can tell, Matlab is more popular at some research institutions, including NASA here in the USA. We worked with them on one of the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) designs. We have a technology that simplifies development of models for structural analysis of complex objects ("interface element" technology), and used that to feed a Matlab simulation of the structural vibrations that are caused by solar radiation acting on orbiting objects.

NextGRADE

(the webpage is wrong. The "R" means "Revolutionary" not "Rapid.")

Some details on the NGST work

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

I''ve never used Maple, but I use Mathmatica and Matlab all the time. I can''t stand Matlab, but some of its packages make engineering work go faster. If it had a better syntax, I would probably like it more. It like short little function names, and I like long descriptive function names. Also, at least at our school computers, the help sucks.

One thing I really like about Mathematica is you can use symbols rather than words for a lot of stuff. When you plan on printing out a notebook and showing it to somebody, its nice to be able to use proper mathematical notation rather than function names that may or may not give all the information to somebody not familiar with Mathematica. I don''t know if maple supports this or not, but matlab certainly doesn''t.

CM

Actually, from what little of Matlab that I have used, the help is pretty good. It comes with a tutorial that walks you through the basic syntax.

I do like Mathematica''s help system better, though.

The Artist Formerly Known as CmndrM

http://chaos.webhop.org

I must say, that having used all 3 I (like most people in the mathematics department) favour maple. It is an excellent package (though the undergraduates have to use MatLab, because the department thinks they are not worth spending the extra on for maple).

Over a decade I use Maple, MMA, Derive, and since 1998, MuPAD.
Personally, I was greatly disappointed by Maple 9 released this
summer as it got even buggier than quite a buggy Maple 8 was.

I''d say, Maple 9 is simply bug-ridden. For example, you may wish
to see 1200+ of Maple bugs at

http://www.cybertester.com/
http://maple.bug-list.org/
http://www.CAS-testing.org/

Please bear in mind that, as for today, only a tiny fraction of
the known to us Maple bugs identified by our GEMM automaton has
been described; we keep working on the next major upgrade of
the Maple Bugs Encyclopaedia coming soon.

Also, you could find extensive comments about Maple 9 quality
on the comp.soft-sys.math.maple news server or access it via
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-
8&safe=off&group=comp.soft-sys.math.maple

MMA 5 got certainly better than MMA 4.2.1, and it has almost the
same price as Maple 9.

The most inexpensive is Derive 6 www.derive.com which is fairly
strong and helpful for any non-math students and even for math
students, it''s only $300 or so. Being an expert in the field, I
claim that Derive 6 is the most mathematically correct and
reliable commercial computer algebra system.


Cheers,

Vladimir Bondarenko

Co-founder, CEO, Mathematical Director
Cyber Tester, LLC
13 Dekabristov Str, Simferopol
Crimea 95000, Ukraine
tel: +38-(0652)-447325
tel: +38-(0652)-230243
tel: +38-(0652)-523144
fax: +38-(0652)-510700

http://www.cybertester.com/
http://maple.bug-list.org/
http://www.CAS-testing.org/

...............................................................

Hello all,

We have updated the Maple Bug Encyclopaedia on Apr 10, 2004:

http://maple.bug-list.org/

Enjoy new math parodies from Maplesoft! Doctors say laughter
is the benefit of one's health

The next updates are coming.


Best wishes,

Vladimir Bondarenko

http://www.cybertester.com/
http://maple.bug-list.org/
http://www.CAS-testing.org/

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[edited by - Vladimir Bondarenko on April 14, 2004 8:44:13 PM]

Mathematica is not very good at solving, really. I had to give one equation (two equations that could be quickly reduced to essentially finding 4th order polynom''s roots) to my friend and he solved it for me in Maple, it took his computer maybe 10 minutes, less than 30 anyways, and I had been waiting Mathematica give me an answer for several hours with a better computer.. This is not a general indicator because I haven''t used Maple but just a one-time experience where Maple was way faster.

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Original post by Strife
I''ve never used Maple (well, I used it for about 5 minutes to play around with once), but I used Mathematica quite a bit last semester, and I really liked it. From what I know, you can''t really go wrong with either.

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OT: Which math classes are you taking? I''m also at UT. Taking compilers and 378 with Naylor this semester.