I'm just experimenting with Maxima, and comparing it to two systems I
already have: MuPAD and Scilab. Just for fun, I decided to get each system
to evaluate the determinant of a 16x16 matrix with entries randomly chosen
from the integers 0..9. I timed each one:
MuPAD:
>> m:=matrix(16,16,(i,j)->random() mod 10)
>> time(linalg::det(m))
95
(Output is in milliseconds).
Scilab:
-->m=floor(rand(16,16)*10)
-->tic,det(m),toc
ans = 6.137E+13
ans = 0.04
(Output in seconds.)
Maxima:
(%i1) showtime:true;
(%i2) f[i,j]:=random(10)$
(%i3) m:genmatrix(f,16,16);
(%i4) determinant(m);
Evaluation took 817.71 seconds (866.82 elapsed) using 94.295 MB.
(%o4) 470231216693085
That's nearly 14 minutes! What's going on here? Surely such a
straightforward calculation as this should be nearly instantaneous? And loo=
k
at the memory usage!
-Alasdair