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Wolfram Research Releases Mathematica 7
mblase writes "Wolfram Research has released the seventh version of Mathematica, and it does a lot more than symbolic algebra. New features range from things as simple as cut-and-paste integration with Microsoft Word's Equation Editor to instant 3D models of mathematical objects to the most expensive clone of Photoshop ever. Full suites of genome, chemical, weather, astronomical, financial, and geodesic data (or support for same) is designed to make Mathematica as invaluable for scientific research as it is for mathematics."
"[It] is designed to make Mathematica as invaluable for scientific research as it is for mathematics." Cut down the advertising please. Or at least advertize some free software. It's been a while since I needes a computer algebra system. How are the free alternatives coming along? Any recommendations?
Maple 4 life!
Did anyone else read that as Wolfman. Pretty impressive for a shapeshifter.
Seriously though this has the potential to do for this form of mathmatics what Spreadsheets did for Accounting.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
Can't wait to see what new stuff they put into this. I didnt even know it was time for a new release already.
The wolf.
The ram.
The heart.
A slashvertisment suggestion for tomorrow:
"The Pirate Bay also Releases Mathematica 7"
I want a refund on my copy of "A New Kind of Science" before thinking about paying more money to the Wolfram organisation.
Much handwaving, little meat, astonishing arrogance.
One of the most overhyped books I've ever actually been suckered into buying.
I found particularly offputting W's treatment of important parts of his own thesis (computational completeness of some automata) as commercial secrets
Aberrations have appeared in my destiny prognostication engine!
This just seems like its got so bloated that it will likely be priced beyond the budget of most students.
I don't see why we have to have these all encompassing suites anyway, what's wrong with small tools at low cost which work together?
Its most likely that students who want but can't afford this will hit the torrent trackers, which isn't really what we want.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I'll keep IDL as my scientific computing corporate overlord during my migration to octave.
Maple is a great alternative.
http://www.maplesoft.com/
You'd think they invented mathematics...
The amount of skill and programming know how to make a program like Mathematica is amazing. I would love to see the code on how they do things.
Mathematica 7 has launched, as noted in Stephen Wolfram's blog post. Among the new features are huge equation typesetting, transcendental roots, and discrete calculus. Looking back at the version 6 discussion, it's perhaps inevitable that comparisons will be made to CAR, CGsuite, GAP, Geogebra, Geometer's Sketchpad, Geometry Expressions, Geonext, LaTeX, Magma, Maple, Matlab, nauty, noneuclid, Pari, Sage, or SeifertView. In other news, the Wolfram Demonstrations project now has over 4000 interactive math demos.
and fuck Matlab too, while we are at it. I got a free hit of Matlab in university and then found out how much they charge for licenses only after I was an addict (had a pile of useful code that I didn't want to throw away). I am not going to keep paying for the privilege of running my own code and am busily learning Python.
Mathematica code belongs to Wolfram Research, Matlab code belongs to the Mathworks, but Python code can be MINE! (and yours too, if I want to give it to you.)
I don't buy into the virtual machines they are pushing now either; they might be free as in beer, but it is only a short-term solution and is nothing more than "free hits" to generate more addicts that need licenses.
The closest thing to a free alternative I've been able to find is Sage: http://www.sagemath.org/ Compared to MatLab, Maple, and Mathematica (yes I know MatLAB is differently purposed than the other two) the usability of Sage blows. It's pretty powerful sure, but when even Maple is easier to use then you've got a problem. I may give the new Mathematica a try. Integration with Word will make some of my lab writeups go a bit faster. Well, maybe as long as Mathematica doesn't take too long to figure out. Too bad our University doesn't sell it to students for $5 a pop anymore.
Run on Linux?
Maxima is released under the GPL.
The screen shots sure are pretty. I've always been a MATLAB user. Can I build applications/tools on top of Mathematica? Is the language object oriented?
Well, to be redundant with my subject... that's a lot of smart programmers. I don't think most programmers go through all that higher level math, and I'm not sure most mathematicians know how to program. No wonder it's expensive.
After being denied internet access for 3 years
Yeah, prison will do that too you.
Layne
I had to write some code using the Mathematica API once, and it hurt. It provides a pipe of tokens, but if you ask for the wrong token, it hangs. You can peak at the front of the queue, but it's still the case that every time you want to read in a token you have to write code to expect any of a million different types of token for all the crazy error messages you never knew you might get.
Also, the GUI is awful. That notebook metaphor just does not work. You want to remove a buggy line of code somewhere but it might be attached to another block so it's really hard to get hold of it. The navigation keys (pg up, end and so on) don't work as you'd expect in an editor so you become very mouse reliant, which is awful for anybody used to working in a programming environment.
In my experience, Matlab is far superior although as others have pointed out, I'd still rather be working in Python. Numpy anybody?
>the usability of Sage blows. It's pretty powerful sure, but when even Maple is easier to
>use then you've got a problem
What do you actually mean by "easier to use", regarding a computer algebra system for doing heavy math? Clicketyclicking around without having to actually learn to use it? This easy to use mem may actually have some validity in desktop environments and generall consumer leisure apps, but I'm wondering to actually see such unwillingness to learn from people doing _MATH_, which are, by definition, required to be curious into how things work and not just clicking around and rotating colorful 3D surfaces the whole day.
I'm not only referring to "clicketyclicking" as you put it, but also the richness and usefulness of the documentation and ease of actually using the software. Using Sage on a computer and then using any of the 3 big math software packages is like comparing swimming in molasses to swimming in water. This is not only in terms of performance and responsiveness, but steps to do the same task. Sage-installation is not exactly typical either. If two software items are equally feature rich, then ease of use us a perfectly valid point of comparison. I'm not entirely sure where your condescension comes from, but I do write a lot of my own tools and use plenty of _MATH_ in my graduate nuclear engineering and physics courses. Appreciating efficiency and ease of use does not preclude intelligence or curiosity.
I have found Scipy (www.scipy.org) to be greater than or equal to anything out there, including Matlab and Octave...but I don't do symbolic stuff much so I can't make a solid Mathematica comparison.
does it matter that it's open source or not?
It does if you don't have $2400 to spend on a copy of Mathematica.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Excuse the double post. I think a more pertinent example of why I find Sage's usability to be lacking is that the times I have tried to use it I have usually ended up writing my own tool in visual fortran in less time than it took to do in Sage.
I've used Maple, Mathematica, and SAS, among other products, for mathematical and/or statistical analysis. From a programming/features perspective, each has its own strengths--and weaknesses.
I'll only briefly mention cost. These things are expensive because it's not like any random programmer can build this kind of software. Especially with Mathematica, these are heavily-researched algorithms that are nontrivial to implement. Also, the market is small for such a specialized and sophisticated application. Your average person isn't ever going to be able to use something like this. They barely know what the quadratic formula is. (They should, but that's an entirely different story.) You think they need to invert a 20x20 matrix? Or compute the Galois group of a quintic? Or even do a simple hypothesis test?
As for the image manipulation stuff, I think that comparisons to Photoshop are a bit naive. Clearly, it's not supposed to be for people who want to do red-eye reduction on their family photos. It's not even for graphic designers or photographers. It's for scientists who want an algorithmic approach to adjusting their images, either for research or for purposes of publication. Could you do these things in Photoshop? Sure. Could you then say what formula or algorithm was applied to the image to produce that specific result? No. And conversely, you wouldn't do layer composition, masking, or on-the-fly tonal adjustments with Mathematica.
FWIW I hate the copy protection on it too. It's infuriating and a burden to legitimate users while doing little to deter piracy.
As much as Adobe would like to sell it as the tool for EVERY purpose under the sun - Photoshop is not really aimed at mathematical/scientific image processing. It was originally aimed at pre-press as a complement to PostScript and Illustrator, and later diversified to web production, etc.
Photoshop has a severe case of feature creep - resulting in a product that, instead of doing one thing well (it always was the leader in print production), does too many things less well.
Mathematica's new features hardly amount to a Photoshop clone; they address only an insignificant subset of Photoshop's features, and in this specialised niche, go considerably further.
you had me at #!
This is the most cogent statement in this entire discussion.
I thought that Sage was quite easy to learn - and I hadn't used Python before I started. I haven't used Mathematica, but I've used Maple and Magma for a few years. There didn't seem to be any difference in learning curve between Sage and the commercial options. In some cases the tutorials and reference were a lot more helpful.
In general, open source software tends to have a crap user interface compared to the commercial application being cloned. In this case the browser based notebook is up there with maple, although the proper latex integration is more powerful. Using Python as the underlying language was genius, as it has a much cleaner design than the languages used in most CAS.
What parts of Sage did you think were difficult to use?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
I just finally managed to get all my damn notebooks to run properly without errors and warnings in version 6 and now I have to go through it all again!?!?!?!?!
*Some* of this comment's content has been covered in the story and discussion, but not nearly all of it. The redundant mod isn't apt.
Tweet, tweet.
$45 for a year of the most powerful math tool in existence. Just for the new functions thats $0.07 per function per month.
My experiences with Mathematica are not especially recent. (I researched and wrote two papers using Mathematica in 2000 and was a beta tester in 1988.)
I wonder if these impressions are still valid:
Everything is in one window--same interface in 2000 as in 1988. Very awkward. Have they expanded the interface or is it still one linear "notebook?"
Circa 2000, there was a bug in every Fourier transform algorithm! It involved someone being too clever in computing scale factors in trying to satisfy the several ways to distribute the the 2 pi stuff over forward and inverse transforms. I mentioned this on the Mathematica newsgroup and others responded that they noticed it also. A bug fix presumably eventually came but not in the months/years that I used the program, even though numerous bug reports had been filed. Does Wolfram _ever_ release bug-fix releases or do they still have the mindset that they don't make mistakes?
Circa 2000, there was very little interactivity with graphical objects and _no_ interactivity with mathematical objects (a la LiveMath Maker, http://www.livemath.com/). Has this situation improved?
Despite the humongous documentation, it was just freaking impossible to discover the default values of arguments. Stunning. Has this improved?
It can be fun playing the waveform of a given function as a sound. Coolest Mathematica feature :D.
Probably the most useful and unsung symbolic math and plotting programs is LiveMath Maker, http://www.livemath.com/ (formerly known as Theorist).
The interface on this thing is incredible. For those of us who aren't doing mathematics research but who just do yeoman math as engineers and scientists, this thing is unbeatable. Equations are manipulated on-screen without any scripting or programming language. The learning curve is pretty small. You have to see it to believe it. I used it just yesterday to help me understand cubic splines. Unfortunately, the program has not been updated in a long time and looks a little ragged around the edges (no antialiasing of plots, for example).
I first used it around 1988 when it was called Theorist and developed by a fellow called Alan Bonadio. For a while it belonged to the Maple folks and for a number of years it has been supported by someone else http://www.livemath.com/.
Don't be fooled by the slightly odd marketing pitch that you find on their home page, which is oriented to high school students. This thing does pretty much all the math that must of us will ever need. Yes, the lack of a programming language limits its use as a general-purpose tool, but we have other tools for that, don't we?
Just because someone is a dedicated mathematician or scientist doesn't mean they want to deal with a bad UI. It will take time to learn either system, but why would you want to put more effort into doing the same thing? You don't learn Mathematica for the sake of learning it. You learn it so you can work on something else. The more time you have to put into learning software the less you have left for your real interests.
" ... is designed to make Mathematica as invaluable for scientific research as it is for mathematics"
The last time I talked to any mathematicians about Mathematica, they rolled their eyes and said that their primary tool was pencil and paper.
Jeopardy Question: What software can represent a model of itself being download on bittorrent?
Say hello to my little sig.
Please someone tell me that they've finally added the ability to zoom and place cursors on plots interactively. And when I say that I don't mean that they've included the ability to do it yourself, I mean something that is professionally done and actually works with all of the flavors of plot (plot,listplot,logplot,etc.) This has been in every other computer math system for the last 10 yrs.
If they haven't can anyone tell me a good home rolled version of this feature. Thanks!
I'm wondering to actually see such unwillingness to learn from people doing _MATH_, which are, by definition, required to be curious into how things work
If you're using the math for a reason (i.e., engineering), then learning how to use a program detracts from solving the problem at hand. If you're into the math as a student or a hobby, again your interest is in the math, not the particulars of the tool.
Your statement more than mildly implies that a more difficult UI is superior because it's a challenge. Certainly there's going to be some learning required to use the program, but people tend to use a programs for a purpose. It's a means to an end. What you're describing is more of the program being the ends itself, where the math (in this case) is irrelevant, but the using of the program is the goal.
After "programming" VBA for a couple of years (ok, flamers NOW!), it seems to me the "cut-and-paste integration with Microsoft Word's Equation Editor" (well, I hope it's actually copy and paste) was one of the most painful changes. Knowing the M$ Office Suite from an API perspective, I would have to say that sort of integration would not be a minor task. Hell, probably it took more man hours to complete than "instant 3D models of mathematical objects".
Nevertheless, last time I checked, for serious equation layout, I still had to use LaTeX (tried Word once, twice, for this, while swearing at it constantly, then gave up).
What do you actually mean by "easier to use", regarding a computer algebra system for doing heavy math? Clicketyclicking around without having to actually learn to use it? This easy to use mem may actually have some validity in desktop environments and generall consumer leisure apps, but I'm wondering to actually see such unwillingness to learn from people doing _MATH_, which are, by definition, required to be curious into how things work and not just clicking around and rotating colorful 3D surfaces the whole day.
Just because you are curious about how things work doesn't mean you have the time to spend doing that. Some of these computer algebra systems are used in a professional environment, and in such cases usability and consistency become especially important.
I don't think so. It is quite handy for what it does, I suppose, like a pocket calculator, but it's hardly a tool for the mathematical researcher. I've never used it myself, I have to admit - it has always seemed to me that you would use it if you need to manipulate some mathematics that is slightly beyond you; or for routine tasks that you know you could do, but which are time consuming. Yes, a pocket ccalculator, in a way. I think a far better tool for a theoretical mathematician is GAP.
It's actually $2495 for a full professional license. (oops)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Honestly, using this program is utter torture. It's in its seventh iteration and I STILL can't undo more than one action?! A program in 2008 that only has on level of undo is a crime against humanity.
This is not to mention all the random kernel crashes that are impossible to debug. At least when Sage crashes you have some sort of chance to figure out why.
Please, someone put this program out of its misery...
...nevertheless, I sometimes use the following function when I'm interested in peering inside Mathematica's guts:
reveal[symb_Symbol] :=
Block[{}, If[MemberQ[Attributes[symb], ReadProtected], Unprotect[symb];
ClearAttributes[symb, ReadProtected]];
Information[symb]]
Also Contexts[], Names[], and Information (or ? for short), as well as Unprotect[] are helpful on their own. ;)
For instance, I figured out how the Method->Oscillatory option of NIntegrate[] works.
To add: Internal`RiemannR[] has existed long before RiemannR[] was officially included in Mathematica 7.
Critics agree - he wrote A New Kind of Science during full moons.
you had me at #!