Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: utzoo!utstat!philip
From: philip@utstat.uucp (Philip McDunnough)
Subject: Re: Scientific programs on Amiga
Message-ID: <1990Sep30.212440.18576@utstat.uucp>
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 90 21:24:40 GMT
References: <4730@crash.cts.com> <681@cartan.math.nd.edu>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto

In article <681@cartan.math.nd.edu> rsn@cartan.math.nd.edu (Ross Niebergall) writes:

[quotes re lack of a good mathematical program on the Amiga deleted]
>
>Maple is available for the Amiga, and it is certainly not a toy.  It's
>price of US$395 reflects that, and I would say that it is a reasonable
>price for this piece of software.

I must agree with this. I have been using Maple, Mathematica, and Theorist
on Macs for quite a while( I am not an Amiga user, but find it rather
interesting). Maple is first rate. In my opinion, it is much more powerful
than Mathematica from a mathematical point of view. Where Mathematica ( and
Theorist) have had the advantage is in the graphics' area. However, Maple
has been updated for many cpu's( don't know about the Amiga) to produce
graphics which easily rival those of Mathematica. The people developing
Maple have been very careful to provide graphical tools which can deal with
the issue of plotting functions. This is more complicated than it would
seem, as you have to worry about singularities,etc...

By the way, since the Amiga does have a bridgecard, there is a very nice PC
symbolic mathematical program called Derive which functions quite well on
an XT and has a neat interface. It's written in Lisp.

It's only a matter of time before the Amiga gets these areas satisfied. In
the meantime Maple for mathematical problems and I believe it's called
Xlisp-Stat from Minnesota( publice domain but VERY good) for statistics
should tie people over.

Philip McDunnough
Department of Statistics
University of Toronto
[my opinions]