Mightier math

IE E E S P E C T R U M • Fe br u ar y 20 03 F ollowing a now established yearly custom, the vendors of Matlab, Maple, and Mathematica have released updates, stuffing already very large packages with such new goodies as document preparation and Excel features. The three math programs are in wide use by scientists and engineers and, in fact, are the dominant products in their field. As do-it-all math packages, they feature extensive numerical, symbolic, and graphics capabilities and are accompanied by libraries of application software and shelves full of “How to” books. Each program has legions of fans who would rather fight than switch, but each can also intimidate new users [see Software Tools, IEEE Spectrum, January 1998, pp. 52–56]. I installed and tested two of these programs (Maple 8 and Mathematica 4.2), and, in these preliminary comments, rely on information about Matlab Release 13 provided by the vendor. Since the programs are mature products, with a decade or more of development behind them, most of the changes are evolutionary. They each have a long list of new mathematical functions, improved algorithms, and enhancements to their user interfaces and programming languages. For some users, these changes could be important, but most of the others would notice hardly any difference. More interestingly, these programs are also evolving in new directions, to address a broader audience than the math wonks who formed their original customer base. For example, in the past few releases, Mathematica has acquired extensive capabilities for document preparation. W O L F R A M R E S O U R C E S