Printable View
I'm a student and I have to either take Matlab or R.
Does any one know anything about either of these as far as usability? Which is the easiest language to use? Which language has more resources available/more common language? What are the differences between the two?
I really like C; does either one operate similar to C?
Any help is appreciated!
Thanks so much!
I have studied a lot of Matlab and some R. I recommend taking Matlab, because it is a really useful for for any kinds of computations. R is more oriented towards statistics.
Neither is similar to C.
Matlab sems to have more of a place in the engineering sector, Ive never even heard of R. Seems its still under development and as such may not ever catch on, while Matlab has been around and is an industry standard. If you learn C/C++ Matlab and Labview, you should always be able to find work.
Thank you!
Oh, it has caught on! It is a mature language used in statistics. I don't think it is used that much outside statistics, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by abachler
Yeah thats what I gathered from the google search. Personally Im not that fond of tools that try to reinvent the wheel for a very specific field. Im a multidiciplinary engineer, so I tend to acquire skills that have a use outside my primary field. I program because I need to be able to program the uC, uP for specialized equipment, not becuase I just want to program.
The problem with Matlab is that it is extremely expensive, except for students and universitites. Is there anyone here who has worked at a company with a Matlab licence? There are free Matlab 'equivalents', but they aren't fully compatible.
Matlab... I hate R.
>> that try to reinvent the wheel for a very specific field.
You talking about R? Course you are. I wrote a big rant about why matlab wasn't reinventing the wheel until I realised what you meant (I reverse-read the posts).
Sounds more like a tool than a language. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sang-drax
Neither is a language really. They're scrips...
Scripts are written in languages.
R is basically the open-source implementation of S.
they are most definitely languages. scripting languages.
anyways, Matlab all the way.
Yeah... blame Freud.
Matlab if you want floating point approximations. Maple if you want actual answers to your problems.
Maple is a subset of Matlab. The symbolic toolbox in Matlab is basically Maple without the gui. In Matlab:Quote:
Originally Posted by Perspective
Code:>> syms a b c
>> A = [a+b c; 1+a b]
A =
[ a+b, c]
[ 1+a, b]
>> inv(A)
ans =
[ b/(b*a+b^2-c-c*a), -c/(b*a+b^2-c-c*a)]
[ -(1+a)/(b*a+b^2-c-c*a), (a+b)/(b*a+b^2-c-c*a)]
>>
I'd take mathematica over 'em both to be honest, but that's because I've used it more.
oh cool, I didn't even realize matlab could do symbolic calculations.
>Maple is a subset of Matlab.
Are you sure about that? Your example is pretty simple, maple can do all kinds of fancy symbolic computations; calculus, factoring, expression simplification, finding closed forms, etc...
I guess I need to play with Matlab more, I used it for a course once but have always turned to Maple for my math needs.
I'm sure. I know my example was quite simple, but I am not a symbolic toolbox wizard.Quote:
Originally Posted by Perspective
http://www.mathworks.com/products/symbolic/Quote:
The Symbolic Math Toolbox incorporates the computation kernel of Maple 10, an efficient and accurate system for symbolic computation from Waterloo Maple Software. The toolbox provides functions for:
[...]
You can directly pass a Maple statement or function to the Maple 10 kernel. The kernel performs the computation and returns the resulting symbolic expression to MATLAB, where you can operate directly on the symbolic object.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sang-drax
Oh I get it, they've actually embedded the Maple engine in the matlab toolkit so you can access it with matlab syntax. nice.