Mathematical Software
Octave: http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
My description:
Useful open source software for performing numerical computations. While it was originally developed for a Linux environment, it has been ported to most popular operating systems.
Website description:
GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. It may also be used as a
batch-oriented language.
Gnuplot: http://www.gnuplot.info/
My description:
Command-line driven software capable of plotting 2D and 3D graphs. The software also has the capability to fit a data set to a non-linear function.
Website description:
Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility for UNIX, IBM OS/2, MS Windows, DOS, Macintosh, VMS, Atari and many other platforms. The software is copyrighted but freely distributed (i.e., you don’t have to pay for it). It was originally intended as to allow scientists and
students to visualize mathematical functions and data. It does this job pretty well, but has grown to support many non-interactive uses, including web scripting and integration as a plotting engine for third-party applications like Octave. Gnuplot has been supported and under development since 1986.
Maxima: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
My description:
A free alternative to software like Mathematica and Maple. Available for most operating system.
Website description:
Maxima is a system for the manipulation of symbolic and numerical expressions, including differentiation, integration, Taylor series, Laplace transforms, ordinary differential equations, systems of linear equations, polynomials, and sets, lists, vectors, matrices, and tensors. Maxima yields high precision numeric results by using exact fractions, arbitrary precision integers, and variable precision
flfloating point numbers. Maxima can plot functions and data in two and three dimensions.
Other Software
LaTeX: http://www.latex-project.org/
My description:
LaTeX is a good typesetter, especially when it comes to typesetting anything with mathematical equations. It has a steep learning curve when compared to Microsoft Word or Open Office, but it has many useful features including the following: auto numbering of equations and figures, a self generating table of context, a variety of different templates, and nearly any mathematical symbol that exists. LaTeX is also the preferred typesetter for most scientific journals.
Website description:
LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. LaTeX is available as free software.
Vim: http://www.vim.org/
My description:
Vim is a highly configurable text editor that is useful for a variety of text based editing. It’s useful for writing code, Latex, and writings scripts for pretty much anything (including the programs I mentioned above). The problem is that it has an extremely steep learning curve. However, Vim is extremely fast once you learn
how to use it.
Website description:
Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is often called a “programmer’s editor,” and so useful for programming that many consider it an entire IDE. It’s not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.
Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/
My description:
Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. Through this program it is possible to compile and run open-source software on a Windows operating system.
MacPorts: http://www.macports.org/
My description:
Great for compiling open-source, command-line software (Gnuplot, Octave, etc.) natively on your Macintosh.
Website description:
The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system. To that end we provide the command-line driven MacPorts software package under a BSD License, and through it easy access to thousands of ports that greatly simplify the task of compiling and installing open-source software on your Mac.
Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/
My description:
If you don’t want to play around with Cygwin or MacPorts, then just install a Linux-based operating system. Most people say that Ubuntu is a good place to start.
Resources
