Wolfram Mathematica

It's the Macintosh of the interpreted software languages, it just works right out of the box!

Vorteile:

The most critical feature of Mathematica (and Wolfram products in general) is that everything is seamlessly perfectly integrated. Everything is curated and maintained up to date. Competing platforms like Matlab sure offer a larger set of functionalities, but the integration of the many "packages" is too often very poor. In Mathematica, every package is fully integrated with the rest of the platform like no other software. Maybe you can say that Labview somehow reaches the same level of integration. Mathematica is a very flexible and multi-purpose software language that can be used for programming pretty much anything. New functionality like "Cloud-deploy" allow anybody to run algorithm made in Mathematica from anywhere in the world, from any device, with the only need of having an internet connection and a compatible browser.

Nachteile:

Some secondary functionalities like the Presentation notebook are not so well developed, yet. That said, I doubt many will ever use it.

Engineering Grad Student Review of Mathematica

Kommentare: Overal really useful if you know how to use it and particularly strong at analytical calculus and symbolic equations. Otherwise the language is a little clunky. If more people used it, it would be more valuable.

Vorteile:

Mathematica is really great at solving symbolic math equations. Unrivaled in my opinion. Analytical solving is a breeze with this and it is intuitive how it all appears, as if you wrote it on a sheet of paper. That is its best feature. Otherwise it has a lot of really cool math functionality for analzying data. I particularly have used it for signal processing.

Nachteile:

Well it is like learning another programming language so you have to get over that barrier. It is hit or miss with other people who know how to read the software or even use it. The only reason I used it was because I found Wolfram Alpha online as an undergrad and when I became a grad student I found out the previous grad students used it. I'd say its programming language is a little clunky, compared to some competitors. And its not open software.

The best multi-purpose mathematical solver

Kommentare: Well designed, insanely well integrated and functional. The most powerful mathematical solver software I have ever used.

Vorteile:

The sheer versatility of the product. It has so much depth and can be used to program and develop mathematical models with ease like no other product I have used before. To be able to call on information from the internet within your code or to add to your solution is mind-blowing. The well designed interface allows any user to easily keep track of their work and report the required results

Nachteile:

The only con I can say for Wolfram is that from time to time especially with too many variables and complex modelling the software would take some time to calculate and output. But the time is nothing compared to other platforms attempting to do the same projects.

Wolfram solving your calculus headaches!

Kommentare: I used Wolfram frequently as a student in calculus courses. It has helped me complete homework assignments.

Vorteile:

The best features of Wolfram Alpha at the free level are the simple search bar for calculation. It was extremely useful in calculus 3 courses, mainly because it presents integrals and derivatives of equations. My favorite aspects is that it provides graphical representations of the equations, which is a visual learning tool.

Nachteile:

I have tried out using Wolfram for non-mathematic topics, including historical figures. The presentation style of these, including showing the "queries", is not preferable to a simple web engine search about the person you are looking for.

What would we do without it?

Kommentare: Mathematica is used as a "canned data" version to process RADAR data. Of course it cannot do real time but that is not the requirement. With Mathematica we have a tool to see almost instantaneously if any new idea has a perspective to work or not. I am personally using Mathematica since 1990 using the "good old" Version 1.2 on a MacIntosh...

Vorteile:

It is a really sturdy workhorse for any purposes. We do lots of RADAR data evaluations, FEM simulations, recently also NN modelling. The general strategy is to implement an algorithm in Mathematica and use this as a benchmark when the same algorithm will be transferred to c++. In contrast to other commercial available packages the output of integral transforms can be adapted to the culture (e.g. signal processing versus mathematical parameter sets for Fourier transform) and we get exactly the envisaged behavior. Generally, one can get algorithmic packages to run in one working day that take a man month to be implemented in c++. In addition, we have own packages to generate Gantt charts, project plans, 3D printer code, PCB circuit layouts.

Nachteile:

Documentation is a bit thin, especially newly added functions tend to be poorly described. Neural Networks work fine but the description of the details is dismal! Please improve with some example networks. It took us eternities to grasp the stuff. Plotting even moderately complex 3D Regions (implicit or discretized) is very unstable and it is really a nuisance. It mostly ends with error messages and a complete breakdown of the kernel...