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From: wester@unmvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.math.symbolic
Subject: Comparing symbolic mathematics systems
Message-ID: <792@unmvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Apr-85 18:01:44 EST
Article-I.D.: unmvax.792
Posted: Wed Apr 17 18:01:44 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Apr-85 03:30:58 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Lines: 22

A number of people have asked questions about the comparable merits of
various symbolic mathematics system, in particular, Macsyma, Maple and SMP.
A useful place to look for such information is in the Proceedings of the
1984 MACSYMA Users' Conference (Schenectady, New York).  In particular,
Stanly Steinberg and I wrote a paper comparing how well Macsyma, Maple and
SMP did their differentiation.  We also compared how fast (and well) they
did when handed expressions like (x+1)^50 all expanded out, which they were
asked to differentiate and factor.  We ran all these programs on a Vax 780
running Unix at the University of New Mexico and just did simple timings.
There were other papers in the Proceedings that at least described various
people's experience in using these packages (primarily, Macsyma, of course
since this was their conference) as well as other packages such a MuMath
developed by David Stoutemeyer which can run on a PC of some sort.  I would
be interested in knowing if anyone has any strong opinions (for or against)
any of these systems (or any other interesting [general] symbolic math
package).
-- 

   Michael Wester
   University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, New Mexico)
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