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.
Sage was mentioned on Slashdot a while back. 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.
JMathLib is a Java clone of the above implementations. Again, I haven’t really had a chance to take it out for a spin yet, but it does have the advantage of being runnable in applet form which makes it a nice choice for quick computations.
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?” Another site listing possible open source math programs can be found here.
Tags: math, matlab, octave, open source, scilab
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…
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.
My statement of the relative completeness of Scilab versus the rest was based on things I’d read, not from extensive testing BTW.
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.)
Thanks, I hadn’t taken the time to check the details of their license, I just took their word at face value.
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
Interesting project. If I get a chance, I’ll take a look and post more information.
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.
Thanks!
I want fft opensource.
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.
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nice summary. I paid for the Octave v3 manual; Octave has darn good documentation.
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Octave works great. I’m converting old ” 1997 bios “computers to Engineering work stations using Damn Small Linux.. Any suggestions for preinstalled software or matlab/octave tutorials??? Any opinions about whether high school students should learn to use matlab???