[Stoves] What format for calculations?

[Robert Penn Taylor]

Crispin,

Scilab bills itself as "The open source platform for numerical 
computation". It aims to replicate the functionality of MatLab, but at 
no cost and without a restrictive license. It contains libraries of 
functions that deal with statistics, numerical differentiation and 
integration, solutions to differential equations, solutions to systems 
of linear or nonlinear equations, optimization, etc., as well as tools 
to produce graphs of 2-D or 3-D functions. The main thing it seems to 
lack is the ability to symbolically solve equations. There are official 
stable releases for Windows and Unix/Linux, and unofficial releases for 
Mac OSX.  More info and download links can be found at:
http://www.scilab.org/

I've not actually used Scilab, but I have used MatLab a good deal. From 
what I can tell, Scilab appears to do a good job replicating MatLab's 
core functionality and won't set you back $1900 US.

-Penn

-- 

Robert Penn Taylor
Graduate Research Assistant
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Iowa State University
(515) 294-5311

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
> Dear Penn
> 
> Could you please tell us a little about SciLab?
> 
> Where can we find it and what will it do?
> 
> I really appreciate your question.
> 
> Thanks
> Crispin
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stoves-bounces at listserv.repp.org
> [mailto:stoves-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Robert Penn Taylor
> Subject: [Stoves] What format for calculations?
> 
> 
> Stovers,
> 
> Do most folks here prefer using spreadsheets to present formulas and 
> calculations, or is there some other format that is more desirable? 
> (Mathematica, MatLab, SciLab [which is free], etc.)
> 
> -Penn
> 
> 
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