Mathematica or Maple?

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OK, so I'm getting a major in math and was considering investing in some nice mathematics software. I can purchase either from my university. Maple is cheaper but the license expires when I graduate.

Does anyone have an opinion as to which of these programs is better or more useful? I have no idea what the differences between them are, so any input would be appreciated.

im really sorry... the following post probably isn't all that constructive:...
wich maple, maple syrup or maple story? ^^. sorry again. i know nowhting of that kind of thing. good luck

I had both a student and then the professional version of Mathematica back in the early 1990s. I liked the graphics it
produced, and it was quite useful for circuit analysis and financial calculations and recreational number theory.
You can probably find a Windows or Linux version on E-Bay at bargain prices, or try Amazon.com.
I have yet to try out Maxima... http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

Around that time I also had MathCad.

Well, I've never used Mathematica, but I have used both Maple and Matlab. Out of the two I prefer Maple, by and far.

I was about to say ... Maxima fucking kicks ass

Octave is also very good

I used maple a few years about to do simple integrals and basics. Nothing more then what a TI-89 would do and it did work pretty well.

Now I use matlab but I'm an mechanical engineering major so it may not be what you want. I do know a math major that does a lot of work with matlab. I have a professor that uses mathcad but I never have.

It all depends on what you want to do.

I have a problem with all these scientific computing packages.

They provide a lot of great tools.

Then they glue them together with an unfamiliar and invariably sh***y programming language.

Why?

I second Octave! W/ the money you would've spend on the software go buy a buncha books wrt analysis/algebra/topology/what have ya. You can pickup international editions of some great stuff for pennies on the dollar.

http://www.abebooks.com

best place to buy books period

since this is my 5th post you'll have to copy and paste
dealoz dot com
This is where you get books

This site looks pretty cool

However, I should humbly observe that abebooks offers non-textbooks

I have several sources of free textbooks, such as Textbook Revolution, Open Culture, the Assayer, etc. I'm just wondering what to do for math software. I think I'll try out some of the free alternatives and see how they do. A friend of mine managed somehow to get Maple for free, so maybe she'll let me try it out long enough that I can compare it. And I believe there are computers somewhere on campus with Mathematica installed, so I'll try to find those as well.

If they don't offer a trial try emailing them saying that you are a student and would like to try it out. I tried that with solidworks and they sent me a link and code for a 60 day trial.

It would help greatly if we knew what fields of math you need to work in, what methods you need to use, etc.

For example MATLAB/Octave doesn't handle symbols quite as well as a bona fide CAS like Maxima; they're mostly for a lot of number crunching. On the other hand, many CAS lack some of these tools.

That's true. Right now I'm working on some linear algebra, so ability to handle matrices would be a nice feature. In a semester or two I'll probably have some fun differential equations to mess with. I was partially wondering what exactly the differences were between these programs, whether any of them can do things the others can't. Since I don't have a very specific area of math that I'm deeply interested in, I suppose that a program that was more versatile than the others would be best.

I would recommend Maxima unless you have to do partial diff eqs or some shit. It's an insanely good CAS and even though I know Lisp, I've never had to mess with the internals, which is something I worried about when I first got it.

Here are the manual sections on lin alg respective diff eqs; have fun

http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manu ... html#SEC81
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manu ... html#SEC71