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Octave OK?

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Owen Densmore

Octave OK?

Administrator

Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
mathematical software.

Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a bit.

But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.

MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.

So the question is: Is Octave reasonably complete in terms of being a
subset of MatLab? It certainly won't be as polished, but I just
don't want to climb Yet Another Learning Curve if it really hasn't
got the mojo.

BTW: One great success in the open source math world is R, the
statistics package. I'm quite impressed with how well its been
working out. It too has a commercial big brother, S, but apparently
R is good enough.

I must say Mathematica's symbolics are sweet and as far as I know
there's no interesting equivalent in the open source world.

Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
math software would be welcome.

-- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

Russell Standish

Octave OK?

Octave is quite a respectable subset of Matlab these days - it is a
serious tool. My previous group was involved in adapting it to use 64
bit computers, meaning matrices larger than 2GB - which is something
Matlab cannot do!

The main negative is Matlab's graphics are superior to
Octave's. Octave delegates its graphics to GNUPlot (which is
excellent, but not comparable with Matlab's builtin graphics). I
believe Octave can now delegate to other graphics packages, but I have
no experience with this.

For free or open source equivalents to Mathematica, take a look at
MuPad (I don't think its open source, but it either free, or very
cheap). I used to use a package called GNU Calc that ran in emacs (the
"more of an operating system than an editor" editor). Unfortunately,
it seems to no longer be maintained, is not longer compatible with
current emacs releases, and what is worse is that there is a new GNU
Calc package which does not do symbolic computation. :( Anyone who
knows me knows I have an alergy to lisp, otherwise I'd take charge of
the situation myself. I especially liked using vector and matrix
functions directly in emacs - sort of turned emacs in a spreadsheet
program, useful for preparing graphs etc. GNU Calc would also delegate
graphics to GNUPlot!

Cheers

On Mon, Oct 24, 2005 at 03:29:28PM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote:

> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>
> Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
> occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
> mathematical software.
>
> Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
> old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a bit.
>
> But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
> too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.
>
> MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
> Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
> working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.
>
> So the question is: Is Octave reasonably complete in terms of being a
> subset of MatLab? It certainly won't be as polished, but I just
> don't want to climb Yet Another Learning Curve if it really hasn't
> got the mojo.
>
> BTW: One great success in the open source math world is R, the
> statistics package. I'm quite impressed with how well its been
> working out. It too has a commercial big brother, S, but apparently
> R is good enough.
>
> I must say Mathematica's symbolics are sweet and as far as I know
> there's no interesting equivalent in the open source world.
>
> Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
> math software would be welcome.
>
> -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org

--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
Mathematics 0425 253119 (")
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 R.Standish at unsw.edu.au
Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Guerin

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

> Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
> math software would be welcome.

http://www.scipy.org/About/
"SciPy is a collection of mathematical algorithms and convenience functions
built on the Numeric extension for Python. It adds significant power to the
interactive Python session by exposing the user to high-level commands and
classes for the manipulation and visualization of data. With SciPy, an
interactive Python session becomes a data-processing and system-prototyping
environment rivaling sytems such as Matlab, IDL, Octave, R-Lab, and SciLab.

The additional power of using SciPy within Python, however, is that a powerful
programming language is also available for use in developing sophisticated
programs and specialized applications. Scientific applications written in SciPy
benefit from the development of additional modules in numerous niches of the
software landscape by developers across the world. Everything from parallel
programming to web and database subroutines and classes have been made available
to the Python programmer. All of this power is available in addition to the
mathematical libraries in SciPy."

Michael Gizzi

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

I don't have an answer to Owen's question, but yet another parallel question
-- I am growing frustrated with Microsoft Excel for graphing the results
from my ABM research and am looking for good alternatives. OriginLab looked
like exactly what I was looking for, but like Mathematica, its price tag is
prohibitive.

I found something called dPlot, which is very reasonably priced ($30):
http://www.dplot.com/?source=dplot and it looks decent. Does anyone have any
experience with it?

Or other good graphing solutions reasonably priced? I am very interested in
the opinions of others on the list.

Best,

Michael Gizzi

On 10/24/05, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

>
> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org <http://friam.org> for map
> ======================================
>
> Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
> occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
> mathematical software.
>
> Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
> old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a bit.
>
> But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
> too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.
>
> MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
> Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
> working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.
>
> So the question is: Is Octave reasonably complete in terms of being a
> subset of MatLab? It certainly won't be as polished, but I just
> don't want to climb Yet Another Learning Curve if it really hasn't
> got the mojo.
>
> BTW: One great success in the open source math world is R, the
> statistics package. I'm quite impressed with how well its been
> working out. It too has a commercial big brother, S, but apparently
> R is good enough.
>
> I must say Mathematica's symbolics are sweet and as far as I know
> there's no interesting equivalent in the open source world.
>
> Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
> math software would be welcome.
>
> -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org
>

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Dan Kunkle

Octave OK?

I used Octave quite a bit about three years ago. I helped develop a GA
for optimizing halftone masks in Matlab, then we decided to convert to
Octave for some reason. Octave was rich enough to allow for the
(relatively easy) conversion from Matlab. Better yet, if you're not
moving between Matlab and Octave you probably won't notice the
differences.

As for plotting, I use Matlab a lot. GnuPlot is my next favorite,
especially when combined with a higher-level languages, like Octave or
Python. Octave + GnuPlot is a good substitute for Matlab. As Steve
mentioned: Python + SciPy + GnuPlot is a good combo too. All of this
(except for Matlab) is free.

http://www.gnuplot.info/

For drawing graphs (vertexes and edges) I've been using GraphViz
(free). This automatically lays out the graph and is great for trees,
lattices, DAGs, etc.

http://www.graphviz.org/

-Dan

On 10/24/05, Michael Gizzi <mgizzi at gmail.com> wrote:

> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>
>
>
> I don't have an answer to Owen's question, but yet another parallel question
> -- I am growing frustrated with Microsoft Excel for graphing the results
> from my ABM research and am looking for good alternatives. OriginLab looked
> like exactly what I was looking for, but like Mathematica, its price tag is
> prohibitive.
>
> I found something called dPlot, which is very reasonably priced ($30):
> http://www.dplot.com/?source=dplot and it looks decent.
> Does anyone have any experience with it?
>
> Or other good graphing solutions reasonably priced? I am very interested
> in the opinions of others on the list.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael Gizzi
>
>
>
> On 10/24/05, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
> > ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> > ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> > ** See friam.org for map
> > ======================================
> >
> > Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
> > occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
> > mathematical software.
> >
> > Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
> > old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a bit.
> >
> > But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
> > too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.
> >
> > MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
> > Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
> > working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.
> >
> > So the question is: Is Octave reasonably complete in terms of being a
> > subset of MatLab? It certainly won't be as polished, but I just
> > don't want to climb Yet Another Learning Curve if it really hasn't
> > got the mojo.
> >
> > BTW: One great success in the open source math world is R, the
> > statistics package. I'm quite impressed with how well its been
> > working out. It too has a commercial big brother, S, but apparently
> > R is good enough.
> >
> > I must say Mathematica's symbolics are sweet and as far as I know
> > there's no interesting equivalent in the open source world.
> >
> > Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
> > math software would be welcome.
> >
> > -- Owen
> >
> > Owen Densmore
> > http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> > Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org
> >
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org
>
>

Owen Densmore

Octave OK?

Administrator

In reply to this post by Michael Gizzi

My first post-SFI-summer-school project was to look into recently
published power-law search techniques:
http://backspaces.net/sun/PLaw/

The basic approach was to build LOTS of power law networks, and show
pictures of what they look like and gather statistics:
http://backspaces.net/sun/PLaw/PLaw.html
.. and to discuss global features of the entire suite of experiments:
http://backspaces.net/sun/PLaw/PLDiscuss.html

I used GraphVis and GnuPlot to build stuff like:
http://backspaces.net/sun/PLaw/html/TdS-X-3-2.2.html

I wrote tons of shell scripts to munge the data and then ran them
through GnuPlot.

The down-side of these is that they don't have a lot sexy stuff with
3D histograms and so on. Definitely your-basic-unix sort of thing.
Very portable and solid and a huge community of users.

-- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

On Oct 24, 2005, at 3:55 PM, Michael Gizzi wrote:

> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>
> I don't have an answer to Owen's question, but yet another parallel
> question
> -- I am growing frustrated with Microsoft Excel for graphing the
> results
> from my ABM research and am looking for good alternatives.
> OriginLab looked
> like exactly what I was looking for, but like Mathematica, its
> price tag is
> prohibitive.
>
> I found something called dPlot, which is very reasonably priced ($30):
> http://www.dplot.com/?source=dplot and it looks decent. Does anyone
> have any
> experience with it?
>
> Or other good graphing solutions reasonably priced? I am very
> interested in
> the opinions of others on the list.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael Gizzi
>
>
>
> On 10/24/05, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
>> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
>> ** See friam.org <http://friam.org> for map
>> ======================================
>>
>> Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
>> occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
>> mathematical software.
>>
>> Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
>> old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a
>> bit.
>>
>> But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
>> too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.
>>
>> MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
>> Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
>> working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.
>>
>> So the question is: Is Octave reasonably complete in terms of being a
>> subset of MatLab? It certainly won't be as polished, but I just
>> don't want to climb Yet Another Learning Curve if it really hasn't
>> got the mojo.
>>
>> BTW: One great success in the open source math world is R, the
>> statistics package. I'm quite impressed with how well its been
>> working out. It too has a commercial big brother, S, but apparently
>> R is good enough.
>>
>> I must say Mathematica's symbolics are sweet and as far as I know
>> there's no interesting equivalent in the open source world.
>>
>> Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
>> math software would be welcome.
>>
>> -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore
>> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
>> http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> www.friam.org

Owen Densmore

Octave OK?

Administrator

In reply to this post by Michael Gizzi

Oops: forgot to mention R .. which does interesting graphing too.
http://www.r-project.org/

-- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

On Oct 24, 2005, at 3:55 PM, Michael Gizzi wrote:

> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>
>
> I don't have an answer to Owen's question, but yet another parallel
> question -- I am growing frustrated with Microsoft Excel for
> graphing the results from my ABM research and am looking for good
> alternatives. OriginLab looked like exactly what I was looking
> for, but like Mathematica, its price tag is prohibitive.
>
> I found something called dPlot, which is very reasonably priced
> ($30): http://www.dplot.com/?source=dplot and it looks decent.
> Does anyone have any experience with it?
>
> Or other good graphing solutions reasonably priced? I am very
> interested in the opinions of others on the list.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael Gizzi
>
>
>
> On 10/24/05, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>
> Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
> occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
> mathematical software.
>
> Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
> old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a
> bit.
>
> But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
> too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.
>
> MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
> Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
> working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.
>
> So the question is: Is Octave reasonably complete in terms of being a
> subset of MatLab? It certainly won't be as polished, but I just
> don't want to climb Yet Another Learning Curve if it really hasn't
> got the mojo.
>
> BTW: One great success in the open source math world is R, the
> statistics package. I'm quite impressed with how well its been
> working out. It too has a commercial big brother, S, but apparently
> R is good enough.
>
> I must say Mathematica's symbolics are sweet and as far as I know
> there's no interesting equivalent in the open source world.
>
> Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
> math software would be welcome.
>
> -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> www.friam.org

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Tom Johnson

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Michael Gizzi

Mike:

I think a product called Xcelcius --
http://www.xcelsius.com/index.html -- has promise. And, I recall,
there is an educational price available.

-tom

On 10/24/05, Michael Gizzi <mgizzi at gmail.com> wrote:

J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com

"He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."
-John McCarthy, Stanford University mathematician
==============================================

Owen Densmore

Octave OK?

Administrator

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

OK, a related question: symbolics. I understand why most of us
actually work with matrix & polynomial data .. its where most of the
applied work is.

But lets suppose I want to send you an equation:

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or

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.. how would you even make these? And even better, how'd you send
them to me not as images, but as some sort of format (MathML or
similar)?

I think symbolics are important and I'm a bit concerned Octave/MatLab
do not include them.

-- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

Martin C. Martin

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Owen Densmore wrote:

>
> Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
> occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
> mathematical software.
>
> Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
> old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a bit.
>
> But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
> too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.
>
> MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
> Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
> working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.

Matlab and Mathematica are really aimed at different problems. Matlab
is for working with actual numbers; it's main data type is the
n-dimensional array of doubles. Mathematica is for working with
symbolic representations. For example, by default Mathematica computes
exact answers; it stores sqrt(2) as sqrt(2), not 1.414... Mathematica
is more aimed at solving equations, differentiation/integration,
simplifying formula, etc. Matlab is about numerical computation.

So, if you're looking for an open source Mathematica, I don't think
Octave is really the thing. I've heard Macsyma is still around, but
don't know what shape it's in. Maple is closed source and expensive,
but not as expensive as Mathematica (I think.)

In my mind, having used both, the differences between R and
Matlab/Octave are small, just in emphasis. The fundamental data type of
both is the multi-d array of numbers, and most things that are easy in 1
are pretty easy in the other.

Martin C. Martin

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Owen Densmore wrote:
>
> I think symbolics are important and I'm a bit concerned Octave/MatLab
> do not include them.

In my mind, they're just different tools for different goals. Symbolic
manipulation uses different techniques for solving different sorts of
problems.

By the way, the wikipedia has a good entry on this stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_algebra_system

which lists a bunch of computer algebra systems, both commercial and
open source.

- Martin

Martin C. Martin

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Michael Gizzi

If you just want to graph there are better packages; but if you're
trying to do in depth analysis to figure out what's going on, there
seems to be a clear open source winner for statistical analysis,
including many different forms of graphing: R

www.r-project.org

- Martin

Michael Gizzi wrote:

> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I don't have an answer to Owen's question, but yet another parallel
> question -- I am growing frustrated with Microsoft Excel for graphing
> the results from my ABM research and am looking for good alternatives.
> OriginLab looked like exactly what I was looking for, but like
> Mathematica, its price tag is prohibitive.
>
> I found something called dPlot, which is very reasonably priced ($30):
> http://www.dplot.com/?source=dplot and it looks decent. Does anyone
> have any experience with it?
>
> Or other good graphing solutions reasonably priced? I am very
> interested in the opinions of others on the list.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael Gizzi
>
>
>
> On 10/24/05, *Owen Densmore* <owen at backspaces.net
> <mailto:owen at backspaces.net>> wrote:
>
> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org <http://friam.org> for map
> ======================================
>
> Now that I'm reading math books to get my Math Chops back up, it
> occurred to me to, in parallel, investigate the topics using
> mathematical software.
>
> Fortunately, I have a Mathematica student edition that's not very
> old .. 5.0 and the most recent is 5.2. So I'm fiddling with that a
> bit.
>
> But with the $2,000 price tag, I am not real excited about getting
> too involved with the critter. So I thought I'd look at alternatives.
>
> MatLab is quite popular, and there's an open source version called
> Octave. Well, I downloaded the critter and got it and GnuPlot
> working nicely together. Seems reasonable from what I can tell.
>
> So the question is: Is Octave reasonably complete in terms of being a
> subset of MatLab? It certainly won't be as polished, but I just
> don't want to climb Yet Another Learning Curve if it really hasn't
> got the mojo.
>
> BTW: One great success in the open source math world is R, the
> statistics package. I'm quite impressed with how well its been
> working out. It too has a commercial big brother, S, but apparently
> R is good enough.
>
> I must say Mathematica's symbolics are sweet and as far as I know
> there's no interesting equivalent in the open source world.
>
> Any other pointers to open/free or modestly priced (<$500 I'd say)
> math software would be welcome.
>
> -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org

Parks, Raymond

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Owen Densmore wrote:

> .. how would you even make these? And even better, how'd you send them
> to me not as images, but as some sort of format (MathML or similar)?

LaTEX - probably edited with Eclipse - possibly output as PDF.

--
Ray Parks rcparks at sandia.gov
IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024
IORTA Department Fax:505-844-9641
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

Owen Densmore

Octave OK?

Administrator

On Oct 25, 2005, at 10:30 AM, Raymond Parks wrote:
> Owen Densmore wrote:
>> .. how would you even make these? And even better, how'd you
>> send them
>> to me not as images, but as some sort of format (MathML or similar)?
>
> LaTEX - probably edited with Eclipse - possibly output as PDF.

OK, that would work and may be the best practitioner solution. Be
nice if there were a LaTex browser plugin.

But suppose I send you one of these. Would you then be able to
import it into Mathematica or any other symbolic software system? Or
even non-Tex document editor or html doc?

LaTex has a following and it is in a parsable form, but it certainly
is not a math standard. PDF is roughly equivalent to a GIF file,
view only. Indeed, other than MathML, there really are no universal
symbolic standards, that I know of. I suspect most papers published
nowadays use the weird Word equation plugin.

Aren't you all getting tired of symbolic mathematics being a second
class citizen on the web, and indeed in computing in general? I sure
am.

-- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

Dan Kunkle

Octave OK?

LaTeX might not be a wide spread standard, but at least in my little,
encapsulated world of academic CS it is (and other math/science
disciplines). Almost anything published starts as LaTeX.

I've started taking notes in class in LaTeX on my laptop, even in
symbolic intensive courses. I can turn around and produce PS, PDF,
HTML, etc. from this, but usually I just read it as is unless I want
to share. You could even produce a MS Word doc, though I can't imagine
why anyone would want to subject themselves to that.

I edit in a simple text editor, like vi and its extensions, but there
are a good number of more featureful LaTeX editors out there (even
some WYSIWYG ones). I don't know of any symbolic manipulation
languages that can import LaTeX offhand, but I know a lot of packages
can use LaTeX to specify symbolic output, for example on plots/graphs
(Matlab and Mathematica can do this). Further, there are some packages
to translate LaTeX to MathML.

Some links:

LaTeX: http://www.latex-project.org/
Mac OS X environments: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
Windows environments: http://www.itsfd.de/texwin/
LaTeX to MathML: http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/textomml.html

And just for fun, see this demo that can (sort of) translate
handwriting into LaTeX and MathML expressions:

http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/natural-log/demo/

Despite the above, I would agree that symbolics are a second class
citizen on the web; because math is a second class citizen in the
world. Sad, but true.

-Dan

On 10/25/05, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>
> On Oct 25, 2005, at 10:30 AM, Raymond Parks wrote:
> > Owen Densmore wrote:
> >> .. how would you even make these? And even better, how'd you
> >> send them
> >> to me not as images, but as some sort of format (MathML or similar)?
> >
> > LaTEX - probably edited with Eclipse - possibly output as PDF.
>
> OK, that would work and may be the best practitioner solution. Be
> nice if there were a LaTex browser plugin.
>
> But suppose I send you one of these. Would you then be able to
> import it into Mathematica or any other symbolic software system? Or
> even non-Tex document editor or html doc?
>
> LaTex has a following and it is in a parsable form, but it certainly
> is not a math standard. PDF is roughly equivalent to a GIF file,
> view only. Indeed, other than MathML, there really are no universal
> symbolic standards, that I know of. I suspect most papers published
> nowadays use the weird Word equation plugin.
>
> Aren't you all getting tired of symbolic mathematics being a second
> class citizen on the web, and indeed in computing in general? I sure
> am.
>
> -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org
>

Martin C. Martin

Octave OK?

Maple has this ability built in:

> latex(int(f(x), x=a..b));
\int _{a}^{b}\!f \left( x \right) {dx}

- Martin

Dan Kunkle wrote:

>** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
>** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
>** See friam.org for map
>======================================
>
>LaTeX might not be a wide spread standard, but at least in my little,
>encapsulated world of academic CS it is (and other math/science
>disciplines). Almost anything published starts as LaTeX.
>
>I've started taking notes in class in LaTeX on my laptop, even in
>symbolic intensive courses. I can turn around and produce PS, PDF,
>HTML, etc. from this, but usually I just read it as is unless I want
>to share. You could even produce a MS Word doc, though I can't imagine
>why anyone would want to subject themselves to that.
>
>I edit in a simple text editor, like vi and its extensions, but there
>are a good number of more featureful LaTeX editors out there (even
>some WYSIWYG ones). I don't know of any symbolic manipulation
>languages that can import LaTeX offhand, but I know a lot of packages
>can use LaTeX to specify symbolic output, for example on plots/graphs
>(Matlab and Mathematica can do this). Further, there are some packages
>to translate LaTeX to MathML.
>
>Some links:
>
>LaTeX: http://www.latex-project.org/
>Mac OS X environments: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
>Windows environments: http://www.itsfd.de/texwin/
>LaTeX to MathML: http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/textomml.html
>
>And just for fun, see this demo that can (sort of) translate
>handwriting into LaTeX and MathML expressions:
>
>http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/natural-log/demo/
>
>Despite the above, I would agree that symbolics are a second class
>citizen on the web; because math is a second class citizen in the
>world. Sad, but true.
>
>-Dan
>
>On 10/25/05, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
>
>
>>** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
>>** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
>>** See friam.org for map
>>======================================
>>
>>On Oct 25, 2005, at 10:30 AM, Raymond Parks wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Owen Densmore wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>.. how would you even make these? And even better, how'd you
>>>>send them
>>>>to me not as images, but as some sort of format (MathML or similar)?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>LaTEX - probably edited with Eclipse - possibly output as PDF.
>>>
>>>
>>OK, that would work and may be the best practitioner solution. Be
>>nice if there were a LaTex browser plugin.
>>
>>But suppose I send you one of these. Would you then be able to
>>import it into Mathematica or any other symbolic software system? Or
>>even non-Tex document editor or html doc?
>>
>>LaTex has a following and it is in a parsable form, but it certainly
>>is not a math standard. PDF is roughly equivalent to a GIF file,
>>view only. Indeed, other than MathML, there really are no universal
>>symbolic standards, that I know of. I suspect most papers published
>>nowadays use the weird Word equation plugin.
>>
>>Aren't you all getting tired of symbolic mathematics being a second
>>class citizen on the web, and indeed in computing in general? I sure
>>am.
>>
>> -- Owen
>>
>>Owen Densmore
>>http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>>
>>
>>
>>============================================================
>>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>>Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>>
>
>============================================================
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org
>
>

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George Duncan

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Dan Kunkle

I agree that LaTex has become the standard in the mathematical sciences,
certainly from my experience in the statistics community.
That said, I am quite used to doing things in Word, not with the default
equation editor, which is quite limited, but with MathType, which is much
more flexible. Right now I am working on a book with two others, one of whom
wants to work in Word and the other in LaTex. Does anyone know of efficient
software to translate between LaTex and Word (including equations of
course)?
Cheers, George

On 10/25/05, Dan Kunkle <dan at redfish.com> wrote:

>
> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org <http://friam.org> for map
> ======================================
>
> LaTeX might not be a wide spread standard, but at least in my little,
> encapsulated world of academic CS it is (and other math/science
> disciplines). Almost anything published starts as LaTeX.
>
> I've started taking notes in class in LaTeX on my laptop, even in
> symbolic intensive courses. I can turn around and produce PS, PDF,
> HTML, etc. from this, but usually I just read it as is unless I want
> to share. You could even produce a MS Word doc, though I can't imagine
> why anyone would want to subject themselves to that.
>
> I edit in a simple text editor, like vi and its extensions, but there
> are a good number of more featureful LaTeX editors out there (even
> some WYSIWYG ones). I don't know of any symbolic manipulation
> languages that can import LaTeX offhand, but I know a lot of packages
> can use LaTeX to specify symbolic output, for example on plots/graphs
> (Matlab and Mathematica can do this). Further, there are some packages
> to translate LaTeX to MathML.
>
> Some links:
>
> LaTeX: http://www.latex-project.org/
> Mac OS X environments: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
> Windows environments: http://www.itsfd.de/texwin/
> LaTeX to MathML: http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/textomml.html
>
> And just for fun, see this demo that can (sort of) translate
> handwriting into LaTeX and MathML expressions:
>
> http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/natural-log/demo/
>
> Despite the above, I would agree that symbolics are a second class
> citizen on the web; because math is a second class citizen in the
> world. Sad, but true.
>
> -Dan
>
> On 10/25/05, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
> > ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> > ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> > ** See friam.org <http://friam.org> for map
> > ======================================
> >
> > On Oct 25, 2005, at 10:30 AM, Raymond Parks wrote:
> > > Owen Densmore wrote:
> > >> .. how would you even make these? And even better, how'd you
> > >> send them
> > >> to me not as images, but as some sort of format (MathML or similar)?
> > >
> > > LaTEX - probably edited with Eclipse - possibly output as PDF.
> >
> > OK, that would work and may be the best practitioner solution. Be
> > nice if there were a LaTex browser plugin.
> >
> > But suppose I send you one of these. Would you then be able to
> > import it into Mathematica or any other symbolic software system? Or
> > even non-Tex document editor or html doc?
> >
> > LaTex has a following and it is in a parsable form, but it certainly
> > is not a math standard. PDF is roughly equivalent to a GIF file,
> > view only. Indeed, other than MathML, there really are no universal
> > symbolic standards, that I know of. I suspect most papers published
> > nowadays use the weird Word equation plugin.
> >
> > Aren't you all getting tired of symbolic mathematics being a second
> > class citizen on the web, and indeed in computing in general? I sure
> > am.
> >
> > -- Owen
> >
> > Owen Densmore
> > http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> > Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org
> >
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org
>

--
George T. Duncan
Professor of Statistics
Heinz School of Public Policy and Management
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 268-2172
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Owen Densmore

Octave OK?

Administrator

In reply to this post by Dan Kunkle

Thanks, this is great stuff.

If LaTeX is near critical mass, possibly there are browser plugins
for it?

I always thought of LaTeX the same way I look at emacs .. just a
little bit over the top and a bit of a steep learning curve! I'll
check it out tho.

-- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

On Oct 25, 2005, at 12:15 PM, Dan Kunkle wrote:

> LaTeX might not be a wide spread standard, but at least in my little,
> encapsulated world of academic CS it is (and other math/science
> disciplines). Almost anything published starts as LaTeX.
>
> I've started taking notes in class in LaTeX on my laptop, even in
> symbolic intensive courses. I can turn around and produce PS, PDF,
> HTML, etc. from this, but usually I just read it as is unless I want
> to share. You could even produce a MS Word doc, though I can't imagine
> why anyone would want to subject themselves to that.
>
> I edit in a simple text editor, like vi and its extensions, but there
> are a good number of more featureful LaTeX editors out there (even
> some WYSIWYG ones). I don't know of any symbolic manipulation
> languages that can import LaTeX offhand, but I know a lot of packages
> can use LaTeX to specify symbolic output, for example on plots/graphs
> (Matlab and Mathematica can do this). Further, there are some packages
> to translate LaTeX to MathML.
>
> Some links:
>
> LaTeX: http://www.latex-project.org/
> Mac OS X environments: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
> Windows environments: http://www.itsfd.de/texwin/
> LaTeX to MathML: http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/textomml.html
>
> And just for fun, see this demo that can (sort of) translate
> handwriting into LaTeX and MathML expressions:
>
> http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/natural-log/demo/
>
> Despite the above, I would agree that symbolics are a second class
> citizen on the web; because math is a second class citizen in the
> world. Sad, but true.
>
> -Dan

Carl Tollander

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

So, ok, a proposal might be: send things in MathML, let the receiver
parse it into whatever
their predilection/program can use. Why would this be bad? As far as I
can see, there
would be a problem if there were no my-favorite-format to MathML (and
back) translators,
or if those translators were lossy in some unacceptable way. I don't
think the posts
so far have addressed that.

In short, maybe we should be thinking what the right medium of exchange
might be
rather than whether our favorite programs generate or consume it, if
appropriate
translators are available.

Owen Densmore wrote:

>** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
>** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
>** See friam.org for map
>======================================
>
>On Oct 25, 2005, at 10:30 AM, Raymond Parks wrote:
>
>
>>Owen Densmore wrote:
>>
>>
>>>.. how would you even make these? And even better, how'd you
>>>send them
>>>to me not as images, but as some sort of format (MathML or similar)?
>>>
>>>
>>LaTEX - probably edited with Eclipse - possibly output as PDF.
>>
>>
>
>OK, that would work and may be the best practitioner solution. Be
>nice if there were a LaTex browser plugin.
>
>But suppose I send you one of these. Would you then be able to
>import it into Mathematica or any other symbolic software system? Or
>even non-Tex document editor or html doc?
>
>LaTex has a following and it is in a parsable form, but it certainly
>is not a math standard. PDF is roughly equivalent to a GIF file,
>view only. Indeed, other than MathML, there really are no universal
>symbolic standards, that I know of. I suspect most papers published
>nowadays use the weird Word equation plugin.
>
>Aren't you all getting tired of symbolic mathematics being a second
>class citizen on the web, and indeed in computing in general? I sure
>am.
>
> -- Owen
>
>Owen Densmore
>http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
>============================================================
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
>
>

Russell Standish

Octave OK?

In reply to this post by George Duncan

On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 02:30:24PM -0400, George Duncan wrote:
> ** Starting Oct 28, FRIAM is moving to
> ** Mission Cafe (previously Jane's)
> ** See friam.org for map
> ======================================
>

> I agree that LaTex has become the standard in the mathematical sciences,
> certainly from my experience in the statistics community.
> That said, I am quite used to doing things in Word, not with the default
> equation editor, which is quite limited, but with MathType, which is much
> more flexible. Right now I am working on a book with two others, one of whom
> wants to work in Word and the other in LaTex. Does anyone know of efficient
> software to translate between LaTex and Word (including equations of
> course)?
> Cheers, George
>

I have had this problem frequently over my career, and sadly it seems
there is no solution yet available.

Usually, I end up having to retype all the equations, and fix figures
(it seems Word users are pathologically incapable of producing a
vector graphics figure, not that all LaTeX users are capable of it
either).

One solution for coverting LaTeX to Word is to use LaTeX2HTML (or
similar) to convert to HTML, then import HTML into Open Office HTML
editor, copy and paste the result into Open Office wordprocessor, then
save as Microsoft Word. It doesn't preserve equations and figures, but
does at least preserve formatting and tables, which is what you need
for a significant class of applications, namely documents that
management types insist are written in Word.

Cheers

--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
Mathematics 0425 253119 (")
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 R.Standish at unsw.edu.au
Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------