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."

Comments

Slashvertisement

[Bananenrepublik]

"[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?

Re:Slashvertisement

[navyjeff]

does it matter that it's open source or not? Open source is not inherently better than closed source.

Being able to show exactly which steps a CAS went through to arrive at a solution can be important. With Mathematica, you have to trust that the methods they use, which you can't see, are legitimate and don't introduce any unforeseen error.
I don't mean to pooh-pooh Mathematica; it's an excellent program. But being able to show 100% of your work has intrinsic value.

Re:Slashvertisement

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

With Mathematica, you have to trust that the methods they use, which you can't see, are legitimate and don't introduce any unforeseen error.

Absolutely.

I work on pretty much a daily basis with computer algebra systems. In my work, I am using CAS systems to perform integrals on what would be otherwise an unmanageable amount of equations, in order to generate some nice neat, but still quite large matrices. Despite its obvious technical inferiority, I'm using Maxima to do this. A lot of this has to do with running Mathematica and the like on Linux, which is a painful process, but the peer reviewable nature of an open source system is another major factor.

I've said this before, but essentially Mathematica is the modern mathematical Oracle at Delphi; arcane, totally inscrutable, and regarded by almost everyone as infallible. You cannot use its results professional for anything other than integral tables or the like. At least, not in mathematics. Maybe physicists use it, but I'd have my doubts. (Engineers? ... well they're a heathen lot anyway...)

True, Mathematica is useful. But it's closed source nature, combined with its almost universal presence in scientific research is very troubling.

From my point of view

[thermian]

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.

Re:From my point of view

[fm6]

If you're a student, you can get a copy that expires after a year for $150. Not cheap, but in the same range as your (overpriced) physics textbook.

Me, I have no professional or educational requirement for the thing, but I'd like to have a copy for self-education purposes. But $2K is a bit much. I suppose 5 or 6 would be adequate for that purpose. $150 on eBay.

It's interesting that Mathematica is still supported on MacOS, Linux (including Itanium!) and Solaris. Support for AIX only disappeared recently. Supporting all those platforms does drive up costs just a bit.

Re:I think I'll pass.

[muuh-gnu]

>That would be nice,

It is.

>but doesn't solve the problem

It will.

>of Mathemitca's notorious copy protection.

The Pirate Bay verison of mathematica usually includes protection from copy protection.

>From what I hear, even legitimate owners often have trouble getting past it.

Legitimate owners of ANY copy protection system are generally having orders of magnitude more problems with those systems than users who just get clean copies at their Pirate Bay.

Re:I think I'll pass.

[X0563511]

OK, perhaps I should explain something.

1. Release team
2. Initial distribution (closed FTP, IRC etc)
3. Usenet
4. P2P (Torrents, Kademlia, etc)

The pirate bay folks don't do anything except shuffle bits.

Re:Fuck Mathematica

[timeOday]

I have found one problem with open source toolchans - producing good quality graphics. At the end of the day you have to present the data, and gnuplot just isn't cutting it anymore.

cost, features, and random ramblings

[wickerprints]

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.

Re:Maxima

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Maxima also sucks. Here's a session from just this afternoon.

[omf@midgar 14:45:36 ~]$ maxima
Maxima 5.13.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
Using Lisp GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.8 (aka GCL)
Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING.
Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter.
This is a development version of Maxima. The function bug_report()
provides bug reporting information.
(%i1) Q=matrix.... .....

(%i11) Q.T.transpose(Q);
(%o11) matrix([cos(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12)
  - sin(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22), cos(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11)
  - sin(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21), cos(t) T13 - sin(t) T23],
[cos(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22) + sin(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12),
cos(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21) + sin(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11),
cos(t) T23 + sin(t) T13], [cos(t) T31 - sin(t) T32, cos(t) T32 + sin(t) T31,
T33])
(%i12) trigsimp(%);
Universal error handler called recursively (:ERROR NIL
CONDITIONS::CLCS-UNIVERSAL-ERROR-HANDLER
""
  "Couldn't protect")
Universal error handler called recursively (:ERROR NIL
CONDITIONS::CLCS-UNIVERSAL-ERROR-HANDLER
"" "Couldn't protect")
Maxima encountered a Lisp error:

  Error in CONDITIONS::CLCS-UNIVERSAL-ERROR-HANDLER [or a callee]: Caught fatal error [memory may be damaged]

Automatically continuing.
To reenable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.
(%i13) Q.trigsimp(T.transpose(Q));
(%o13) matrix([cos(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12)
  - sin(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22), cos(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11)
  - sin(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21), cos(t) T13 - sin(t) T23],
[cos(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22) + sin(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12),
cos(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21) + sin(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11),
cos(t) T23 + sin(t) T13], [cos(t) T31 - sin(t) T32, cos(t) T32 + sin(t) T31,
T33])
(%i14) trigsimp(Q.trigsimp(T.transpose(Q)));
Segmentation fault
[omf@midgar 14:48:25 ~]$

Computer algebra systems are not the best to begin with, but Maxima has a very, very long way to go before it can compete with Mathematica. Most of my analytical work on a daily basis is done using Maxima and I can safely say that the program could be a lot better than it currently is.