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Octave replaces Matlab, and scilab/xcos is a simulink replacement.

http://www.scilab.org/scilab/g...

http://www.scilab.org/

I use it a lot. It may be a little more than you need - almost more like an open-source "Matlab" but it is very good, and free.

http://www.libreoffice.org/features/calc/
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
http://www.scilab.org/
http://www.scicoslab.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_programming_language

Fuck desktop calculators. Fuck nostalgia from 70s engineers and programmers who think RPN is the shite because it works like a computer stack. Repeating anything if you get even the slightest thing wrong, or heck, even checking it is a time consuming nightmare on any desktop calculator. Spreadsheets and programmable math environments have FAR superceded dinky desktop calculators.

I'm also wondering why we insist that:

• our source code be able to be wrapped to 78 characters
• a tab (0x09) character is equal to 8 spaces (unless you specify otherwise)
• most major programming languages have function names that are in US English, even Ruby, which was developed by the Japanese, and Scilab's programming language which was developed by French scientists
• POSIX regular expressions' [:alphanum:] character class is most often written as [A-z0-9]

The truth is that we programmers prefer to be able to type things quickly without having to memorize character codes for a variety of Unicode characters; we want to be able to type simple variable and function names using a standard set of glyphs and not have to worry about remembering which variation of a Chinese pictograph was used.

If it comes down to it, we could all just use Ook and not worry about language barriers (or getting much of anything done for that matter).

Maybe you can add something meaningful to the scilab project? http://www.scilab.org/

Scilab numerical algebra system
unxutils native ports of some unix utilities to Win32
speedcrunch calculator
vim better than emacs
Sumatra PDF fast clean pdf viewer

Scilab is developed by a top French academic institution and has behind it an industry consortium support.

http://www.scilab.org/

The scilab serial port interface provides direct access to peripheral devices such as modems, printers, and scientific instruments that you connect to your computer's serial port. This interface is established through a serial port object.
If you want to communicate with PC-compatible data acquisition hardware such as multifunction I/O boards, you need the Data Acquisition Toolbox. If you want to communicate with GPIB- or VISA-compatible instruments, you need the Instrument Control Toolbox. Note that this toolbox also includes additional serial I/O utility functions that facilitate object creation and configuration, instrument communication, and so on.

There are many such toolboxes: DATA ACQUISITION AND REAL-TIME

.. but the specialized libraries aren't as mature. http://www.scilab.org/

• Octave
  
• Scilab
  
• SAGE
  

You've never heard of Scilab or octave? Or the older rlab?

I work in Europe, as a researcher, and two and three years ago, the Mathworks (the company behind Matlab) decided we weren't eligible to research/education prices anymore. They did the same with a bunch of other institutes (in Europe, I don't know about the US). We operate an experimental reactor, whose control is largely based on Matlab programs. Some of these were developed a long time and people left, or retired. There's a lot to be said about the way this was handled by our management, but that's the way it is. So, we had to admit we were screwed, having to pay the price. We met with the Mathworks representatives, and I have to say all I saw a bunch of arrogant jerks.
Anyway, since then, we've renewed our licences every year, and we've been looking for an alternative. We even tried to migrate the whole lab to Scilab but that didn't work out (mostly because of the limited capabilities of Scilab in scientific plotting and GUIs). Some of us use Python + Matplotlib (I'm a big fan), some (often the same people) use Octave. Although we've converted some individuals, we weren't able to find a software which could be used by everyone in the lab as a substitute to Matlab. This is frustrating, as the vast majority of people here use only a fraction of the capabilities of Matlab.
I for one, would be really happy if we had something to replace Matlab, be it Sage or whatever else...

Or you could refer him to Scilab, which is a FOSS scientific package just like MATLAB.

Has a small section on Maths/Science Software. Graphcalc is ace http://www.graphcalc.com/. sci lab also though probably a little complex http://www.scilab.org/. Open Education CD can be found here: http://www.theopencd.org/education

Excellent. I hope this carries through. Scilab is one app that labels itself as open source but fails to meet the open source definition, because it doesn't allow commercial distribution of derivatives. I hope it gets smacked in the butt for being the non-free tool it is.

I have been on the board of the OSI for more than 5 years, and until last year it was fairly easy for us to police the term open source: once every 2-3 months we'd receive notice that some company or another was advertising that their software was "open source" when the license was not approved by the OSI board and, upon inspection, was clearly not open source. [...] Most of the time they would say "Oops! Thanks for letting us know--we'll promote our software in some other way." And they did, until last year.

But what about Scilab, which on its home page prominently claims to be The open source platform for numerical computation (and has been doing so for years)? Scilab clearly does not qualify for the (widely agreed-upon) OSI definition of "open source", because the license prohibits commercial redistribution of modified versions. And yet I've never heard of an OSI campaign to pressure Scilab to either change its license or stop calling itself "open source". As a result, there are many examples of people who have confused Scilab's license with the usual definition of "open source".

I have been on the board of the OSI for more than 5 years, and until last year it was fairly easy for us to police the term open source: once every 2-3 months we'd receive notice that some company or another was advertising that their software was "open source" when the license was not approved by the OSI board and, upon inspection, was clearly not open source. [...] Most of the time they would say "Oops! Thanks for letting us know--we'll promote our software in some other way." And they did, until last year.

But what about Scilab, which on its home page prominently claims to be The open source platform for numerical computation (and has been doing so for years)? Scilab clearly does not qualify for the (widely agreed-upon) OSI definition of "open source", because the license prohibits commercial redistribution of modified versions. And yet I've never heard of an OSI campaign to pressure Scilab to either change its license or stop calling itself "open source". As a result, there are many examples of people who have confused Scilab's license with the usual definition of "open source".

ooops. I meant Scilab.

How about Maxima, or Scilab? A commenter further down also suggested MayaVi.

There are also Scilab and, if you already know python and you like it, Scipy.

Scilab is free as in beer, but not free as in libre. It runs on Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and Windows. It's pretty similar to Matlab, as best I recall. It also includes links to Maple and PVM.
Another possibility (again, not libre, but free) is LyME for the Palm Pilot. LyME is a matlab-like environment good enough for simple what-if scenarios.

If you're running into the limits of Excel, then my advice to you is this: learn to program. Get Octave or, better yet, Scilab. If you need performance, you can use C or C++. I don't know why people use Excel for serious number crunching.

http://www.scilab.org/

Because MATLAB exists.

Or Scilab, if you're broke.

Maxima is probably the best free alternative to Mathematica. http://maxima.sf.net/
SciLab is the free alternative to MathLab. http://scilab.org/
EigenMath is very light and fast CAS, you can handle 7 different versions on single FDD (just kidding) :) I tried this not in details, but it looks promising http://eigenhead.com/
Yacas is CAS too and the only one, which is available for SymbianOS. Soon version for Series60 will appear. If you want to be maximum portable, you can use PC and mobile version of same product. http://yacas.sf.net/
All of these programs has versions at least for Windows and Linux, and some are available for MacOS and Symbian. Go ahead...

Octave is a really nice piece of software! Also check out Scilab.

Not usable for a lot of people who do serious Matlab work. The thing is, a significant portion of Matlab's value lies in the toolboxes; for example, I *need* Simulink 95% of the time. I often need features from the Fixed Point Blockset or from the Signal Processing Toolbox. These functions aren't available in Octave, and Octave (like so many Free apps) lacks equivalent support from manufacturers of data-acq hardware. Also, as far as I know, there's no Octave equivalent to GUIDE, which I have used pretty extensively in the past to do integrated data-collection and analysis apps entirely in MATLAB.

Fortunately, my employer bought MATLAB and toolkits for us.

I've been meaning to try out scilab, though; I'm told its pretty decent. Not Free, quite, but open source.

There are several opensource symbolic math packages. Checkout Scilab for instance.