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Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

mathics.github.io

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Re: Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

#11

Post by rtpg »

sandGorgon wrote: post #9

Genuine question - what is the use of all these versus something like R or Pandas that is actually usable in production as well. What is missing in R/Pandas that makes people choose other pieces of software that does something very similar? Commercial versions of software probably has an edge in support/performance/libraries...Or (as with Simulink ) provides a very specific piece of functionality or integration. But…

Pandas doesn't really do symbolic computation... at least for me that is 90% of the utility of Mathematica (Maple on the other hand....)

Re: Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

#12

Post by sifusam »

sandGorgon wrote: post #9

Genuine question - what is the use of all these versus something like R or Pandas that is actually usable in production as well. What is missing in R/Pandas that makes people choose other pieces of software that does something very similar? Commercial versions of software probably has an edge in support/performance/libraries...Or (as with Simulink ) provides a very specific piece of functionality or integration. But…

Barrier of entry would be what I would consider the primary use case for using all of these vs Pandas and R.

If we look at Mathics only, it features a Mathematica compatible syntax which allows users familiar with the syntax to be up, running and productive with the tool much quicker.

Mathics also provides a notebook, however others do as well as optional downloads. R has RStudio, and you can use Jupyter for Pandas.

Re: Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

#13

Post by sandGorgon »

sifusam wrote: post #12
sandGorgon wrote: post #9

Genuine question - what is the use of all these versus something like R or Pandas that is actually usable in production as well. What is missing in R/Pandas that makes people choose other pieces of software that does something very similar? Commercial versions of software probably has an edge in support/performance/libraries...Or (as with Simulink ) provides a very specific piece of functionality or integration. But…

Barrier of entry would be what I would consider the primary use case for using all of these vs Pandas and R. If we look at Mathics only, it features a Mathematica compatible syntax which allows users familiar with the syntax to be up, running and productive with the tool much quicker. Mathics also provides a notebook, however others do as well as optional downloads. R has RStudio, and you can use Jupyter for Pandas.

Interesting. But then my question is how big is the user base that WANTS to use Mathematica but cannot AFFORD it? Because for a first time user just hunting for a symbolic math, the buy in might not be there.

Re: Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

#14

Post by sandGorgon »

maxpupmax wrote: post #10
sandGorgon wrote: post #9

Genuine question - what is the use of all these versus something like R or Pandas that is actually usable in production as well. What is missing in R/Pandas that makes people choose other pieces of software that does something very similar? Commercial versions of software probably has an edge in support/performance/libraries...Or (as with Simulink ) provides a very specific piece of functionality or integration. But…

Well R and Pandas cover data analysis for the most part, while is is a computer algebra system? Seems like apples to oranges, really more comparable to sage/mathematica.

What about http://rsymbolic.org and obviously symPy ?

Re: Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

#16

Post by gaur »

sandGorgon wrote: post #14
maxpupmax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well R and Pandas cover data analysis for the most part, while is is a computer algebra system? Seems like apples to oranges, really more comparable to sage/mathematica.

What about http://rsymbolic.org and obviously symPy ?

> symPy ?

Uhm... it says right at the top of the linked website that sympy is used as the backend.

Re: Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

#17

Post by dekhn »

sandGorgon wrote: post #9

Genuine question - what is the use of all these versus something like R or Pandas that is actually usable in production as well. What is missing in R/Pandas that makes people choose other pieces of software that does something very similar? Commercial versions of software probably has an edge in support/performance/libraries...Or (as with Simulink ) provides a very specific piece of functionality or integration. But…

The value of Mathematica is pretty straightforward. The language it provides is nothing special, but the scientific and mathematic routines, along with the symbolic support, put it in a class by itself- no open source package I've seen does root finding and other similar processes as effectively.

The symbolic stuff is pretty cool too. Years ago I wrote "pyml" which made all the Mathematica features available in Python via a C language bridge. Whereas in scipy/numpy you can find the eigenvectors of a numeric array (a matrix of floats), in Mathematica, you can find the eigenvectors of a symbolic array (a matrix containing terms like x-1, y-5, etc).

Re: Mathics: A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica

#18

Post by [deleted] »

sandGorgon wrote: post #9

Genuine question - what is the use of all these versus something like R or Pandas that is actually usable in production as well. What is missing in R/Pandas that makes people choose other pieces of software that does something very similar? Commercial versions of software probably has an edge in support/performance/libraries...Or (as with Simulink ) provides a very specific piece of functionality or integration. But…

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