math and fedora

[Stephen Walton]

On Thu, 2004-12-09 at 15:58 -0600, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:

> Sure Mathlab is available but it is not free nor is it cheap.

Actually for academic users it is quite reasonable for multi-CPU
licenses, something less than $100/copy with a lot of toolboxes, and
includes symbolic math.  Whether that capability is worth the money is,
of course, up to you.  We use Matlab for the simple reason that Matlab
skills are in high demand among our local employers.

I did have a good, Matlab-savvy student look at the various packages on
Linux, and he agreed that Octave was probably the best free alternative,
'best' in this context meaning 'easy for someone who already has used
Matlab.'