I was interested in seeing the performance differences between MATLAB and some open source offerings so I googled and came across this: http://www.sciviews.org/benchmark/index.html
It seems like MATLAB did not have a huge edge in performance over R when the test was done, but that Octave was far behind. Note however the test used R version 1.9.0 (currently 2.7.1), MATLAB 6.0 (currently 7.6), Octave 2.1.42 (currently 3.0.1). Has anyone used these and know how a current comparison would fair? Does anyone have the means to conduct a benchmark using current versions? Of course, for a significant number of applications, performance is less important than say, built in features, ease of use, clarity of code, interoperability with other software, etc. On Jul 13, 1:40 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Jul 13, 12:54 am, mhampton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I can assure you that many mathematicians use mathematica in thier > > research; I used to. > > That was my impression too, although I am not a mathmatician. I have > worked with people who have used Mathematica for serious maths > research. Like I've met people using MATLAB for serious engineering > research. > > > But one of the many appeals of Sage is that the > > source is open/checkable - I have had referrees mention that as > > desirable on some of my previous mathematica-based papers. > > Although having the source available and being able to realistically > use the source to check the code are two quite different things. The > fraction of people can > > 1) Be bothered to try to check Sage by looking at the source code. > 2) Have the knowledge to check Sage by reference to the source code > > must be quite small. Of course, the option is nice, but in practice > how many can use it might be a very small number. > > > In my opinion the gap between Sage and mathematica is narrowing at an > > impressive pace. > > Good to hear. > > > For my research purposes Sage is already clearly > > superior; of course I only use a very small fraction of either > > system. For teaching/demonstrations/computer labs Mathematica still > > has the edge for most purposes, but the pros and cons are not easy to > > add up in a one-dimensional way. > > > Actually I think it will be much harder to catch up with Matlab in the > > areas where it is strong, but I still like our odds in the long run. > > Most likely Sage will only win over some subset of users with > > particular needs, but that would be a healthier software ecosystem. > > I must admit, MATLAB seems to have clear advantages over Mathematica > for data processing in engineering applications. > > > Consider as a parting thought that Sage has only existed for 1/10 of > > the time of those systems. > > A bit more than a 10th it must be said - Mathematica has been around > 20 years, Sage more than 3. > > On problem I see is that any new algorithms developed by users of > Sage, can be copied quite easily into Mathematica. I'm not suggesting > Wolfram would lift code, but good algorithms can be turned into > Mathematica code quite easily. In contrast, anything developed inside > Wolfram will not easily propagate to Sage. > > > M. Hampton > > Thank you for your comments. > > Dave --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
