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Hi,
Thought I would add my two cents worth on this discussion. I've been using Maxima now for a few years, and for my purposes (in academia and elsewhere) I find it entirely satisfactory. Maxima contains all of the "gear" that I need for such diverse topics as nonlinear least-squares fitting (symbolic differentiation really helps here!), nonlinear equations, Fourier analysis, and eigen-decompositions. I admit that initially Maxima has a steep learning curve, but once you've seen a few worked examples it is plain sailing. Another advantage I find is that one can get things done quickly; I am also a Maple user and it always takes me longer to figure out how to solve a problem in that environment (especially when they change the language syntax every few years!). Finally, you can't beat the price...
Regards,
Dave Holmgren
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hi,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> Thought I would add my two cents worth on
this discussion. I've been using Maxima now for a few years, and for my
purposes (in academia and elsewhere) I find it entirely satisfactory.
Maxima contains all of the "gear" that I need for such diverse topics as
nonlinear least-squares fitting (symbolic differentiation really helps here!),
nonlinear equations, Fourier analysis, and eigen-decompositions. I admit
that initially Maxima has a steep learning curve, but once you've seen a few
worked examples it is plain sailing. Another advantage I find is that one
can get things done quickly; I am also a Maple user and it always takes me
longer to figure out how to solve a problem in that environment (especially when
they change the language syntax every few years!). Finally, you can't beat
the price...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> Regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> Dave Holmgren</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
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