Software Section Menu

  • Previous Page
  • Up in the Site
  • Next Page

If you like this site, I would appreciate a gift from my wishlist.

Directory of Numerical Software

Table of Contents

Introduction

This is a small, hand-maintained directory of numerical software: spreadsheets, statistical analysis software, computer algebra systems (CASes), matrix/tensor-based packages, etc.

Tensor-based

  • MATLAB (Wikipedia Entry) - a commercial and non-open-source, very comprehensive package, which runs on Windows, Linux and other UNIXes.
  • GNU Octave (Wikipedia Entry) - an open-source (GPLed) and incomplete MATLAB clone.
  • SciPy - a package offering similar tensor-based functionality for the Python programming language.
  • PDL - The Perl Data Language - a package offering tensor-based functionality for the Perl programming language.
  • IDL (Wikipedia Entry) - a programming language used for data analysis. Seems much more limited and baroque than Matlab and friends.

Spreadsheets

  • Microsoft Excel - part of Microsoft Office, a proprietary and commercial spreadsheet program which is still considered the de-facto standard. Available for Microsoft Windows with a different version for Mac OS X with a different (more limited?) functionality.
  • OpenOffice.org Calc - part of OpenOffice.org, a gratis, open-source and cross-platform office suite. Can read and export many proprietary spreadsheet formats.
  • Gnumeric - a free and open source spreadsheet program from the GNOME project.

Computer Algebra Systems (CASes)

  • Mathematica (Wikipedia Page) - a comprehensive commercial and proprietary CAS.
  • Maple - a comprehensive, commercial, and proprietary CAS. Allows editing a proof in Mathematical notation.
  • Maxima - an open-source and free-of-charge CAS written in Lisp.
  • Sage - a comprehensive open-source mathematics software based on Python and many other programs. Very large download with all the dependencies included in the package.
  • Axiom - a comprehensive CAS for UNIX systems, with instructions on how to set it up on Windows. Open-source.

Statistical Software

  • R - an open-source and open-source program for Statistics. Should be very complete.
  • S-PLUS/S+ - a commercial statistics package, implementing the same "S" language as "R".

Libraries

  • GMP - GNU Multiple Precision - a library for bignums , supporting big integers, big rationals and big floats. LGPL licence (open source).
  • GNU Scientific Library (GSL) - a numerical library for C and C++ programmers. GPLed (technically open-source, but restrictive).
  • PARI/GP - a library for fast computations in number theory and other functions like Matrices, polynomials , power series and algebraic numbers. GPLed (technically open-source, but restrictive).