Open Source MATLAB Alternatives
As I mentioned previously, I recently graduated from the University of Illinois. Unfortunately, I also graduated from academic discounts. Specifically, I was looking to pick up a copy of MATLAB for some data analysis problems I need to hammer on for work, only to find that Mathworks does a remarkably good job at checking if you are currently a student (we’re talking send us proof of your current enrollment here).
Anyway, I don’t have “grips” to drop on this (thanks Mike and Ben) so I went in search of Open Source MATLAB alternatives. The following is a list of the major players out there:
Of these, Octave or Scilab is probably the most complete as solution to the problem (though it’s not 100% compatible with MATLAB). Scilab was written by INRIA (who also brought you OCAML), so they know what they’re doing over there. Octave also a great alternative available on many platforms. I wasn’t able to get it via fink, and I didn’t want to manually install it, so I set up a separate Debian machine to run it. I’ve been pleased.
I also gave Freemat a try on my Mac. I was pleased that it provides a visual environment and installs easily on both OSX and Windows. I found it somewhat limited in its graphing capabilities. Octave has been working well for me. Octave actually defers to gnuplot for its graphing, so it’s very full featured. There are a few quirks, but it works fairly well.
Update:
For a more complete listing of MATLAB alternatives, visit
http://www.maths.lth.se/matstat/stixbox/matlabfaq.html
See the section on “Are there many Matlab-type environments?“
UPDATE: Another site listing possible open source math programs can be found here.
Sage was recently mentioned on Slashdot. I haven’t had a chance to to try it out yet, but it looks like it could be the new forerunner. It aims to bring together other Mathmatics software and lets you program in Python rather than some obscure proprietary language. Definitely something worth checking out.
Tags: math, matlab, octave, open source, scilab
November 1st, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Wow, I love Octave and use it over Matlab because I think Matlab is overpriced and try to be idealistic where I can afford to be. I’ll have to check out this Scilab stuff now, though…
November 1st, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Yeah, part of my decision making process was that I wanted something that ran natively under Windows, as that’s what they’re running here at KL. Didn’t want to confuse them with something that required Cygwin, in case I’m not around and they need to work with the code.
November 1st, 2006 at 6:00 pm
My statement of the relative completeness of Scilab versus the rest was based on things I’d read, not from extensive testing BTW.
November 14th, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Note that Scilab is not “open source”, in the sense that it does not satisfy the OSI’s Open Source Definition: the Scilab license does not allow commercial redistribution of modified versions. For the same reason, the FSF does not consider it “free software”.
(I find it somewhat deceptive that the Scilab web page prominently describes it as “open source”, knowing full well that it isn’t according to the FLOSS community.)
November 15th, 2006 at 4:27 am
Thanks, I hadn’t taken the time to check the details of their license, I just took their word at face value.
May 14th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
JMathLib is meant to be a clone of Matlab, but written entirely in java.
A library of mathematical functions designed to be used in evaluating complex expressions and display the results graphically. It will be used either interactively through a terminal like window or to interpret script files.
It is intended to be a java version of programs such as MatLab, Octave and Scilab.
JMathLIb can be found at: http://mathlib.sourceforge.net
May 14th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Interesting project. If I get a chance, I’ll take a look and post more information.
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
There is another clone of Matlab. The program is called JMathLib and is written 100% in Java. It can be found at http://www.jmathlib.de
Kind regards,
Stefan.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Thanks!
July 13th, 2008 at 7:14 am
I want fft opensource.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:57 am
Before you try using SciLab, be aware of the extremely poor documentation. I found it extremely frustrating to use SciLab due to this problem. That’s probably true for more of these ‘open source’ alternatives since they lack the commercial drive to provide these.