Re: OT: Reason to buy a Raspberry Pi ;-) (was Re: shell wrappers for trig and other mathematical functions)
On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 8:06 PM <rhkramer@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Somewhat OT, but (maybe) interesting anyway?
>
> For a long time, I've been aware of the program Mathmatica (by Wolfram
> Research) that does a lot of math, including, iirc, things like symbolic
> integration and differentiation. (Everybody should have those capabilities at
> their finger tips ;-)
>
> Anyway, my thinking on this topic is that I wouldn't mind having a program
> dedicated to the uses the OP brought up (I keep a session of bc - l open in a
> terminal for quick calculations).
>
> But I couldn't remember the name of the Mathmatica program (nor the guy who
> wrote it, who is fairly famous for it), so I went googling and came up with
> the following pages which reminded me of the name, but also pointed out that,
> apparently if you buy a Raspberry Pi, you get a free copy of Mathmatica. So,
> I will seriously consider buying a Raspberry Pi.
>
> (The (Wikipedia) pages listed below also give the names of various competitors
> to Mathmatica, including Mathcad -- disclaimer -- I've never used either of
> these programs, nor probably any of the others listed on these pages (but I
> didn't really look at the names of the other programs):)
>
> * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_algebra_systems]]
>
> * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_numerical-
> analysis_software]]
Funny you should write this just when I'm hacking away in maxima.
Maxima works well in debian and every other platform, and it's my
go-to software for working with symbolic calculations and rational
numbers. To be honest, I use it whenever I need to calculate
*anything*, because it always gives exact results by default. It's
also nice to use software where the source code has comments from the
seventies. None of this modern C rubbish.
I can recommend wxMaxima which renders the formulas a little cleaner.
I personally try to stay away from closed software and hardware which
is why I use debian, and why I don't want neither Mathematica nor a
Raspberry Pi.
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