While it does support the creation of documents that combine text and math, the math is in Mathematica syntax rather than looking more like equations we can intuitively grasp, as MathCad provides.Īt this point, needing the math capability of Mathematica but wanting the syntax and ease-of-use of MathCad, I decided to try Maple, which I understood to be a MathCad "parent". However, its ideosyncratic syntax (basically, you need to learn an entirely different set of "rules" for things like parentheses, square and curly brackets, upper and lower case) gave it an extremely steep (and rocky!) learning curve, not something I would want to turn to for a simpler problem. This definitely has all of the "power" that I could imagine, particularly in the "solving" arena (which is where MathCad had let me down). So I bit the bullet and tried Mathematica. However, the MathCad at the time (12? 13? I'm not sure) didn't seem up to the task. I needed to be able to "point it at data", like MatLab, but needed more sophisticated math ability, like MathCad. For doing the "number-crunching", involving multiple files and megabytes of data, I used MatLab, as I found it easier to handle the "point the program at the following directory and let 'er rip" with MatLab than with MathCad.Ī number of years ago, I started working on an even more complicated problem involving vector-like objects in a six-dimensional space. I used MathCad to develop and test the equations to take the signals (voltages) and convert them (through multiple steps, including getting "scaling" information from other files) into a series of three components representing roll, pitch, and yaw (these eventually were converted to rotation vectors). For example, I might want to know the 3-D orientation of an object (roll, pitch, yaw), given voltages measured by coils fixed to the object inside a stationary magnetic field. In some cases, complicated calculations involving these data needed to be performed. I needed something that would let me express mathematics to do some simple analysis, make a few plots (for my own edification and for teaching purposes), and, most important, would let me create documents that combined text, math (meaning equations, usually), and graphics that could be used for teaching or other didactic purposes.Īt a certain point, I needed to analyze a lot of data, often multi-channel analog samples from a variety of sources. Here are some considerations that I've used. It really depends on what you need to do in deciding which system is "best". I've used all of the "M" systems (MathCad, MatLab, Mathematica, and Maple).
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