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[Help-gsl] Re: comparison to numeric calculation software application


From: Richard Henwood
Subject: [Help-gsl] Re: comparison to numeric calculation software application
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:35:11 +0000 (UTC)
User-agent: Pan/0.132 (Waxed in Black)

On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:13:21 -0500, Jason Lillywhite wrote:

> After reading a little about gsl and trying bindings in Scheme and Ruby,
> I have come to feel that GSL is comparable to matlab, scilab, or
> mathimatica. But since then, have been told by some that I might be off
> a little. How much are we missing out on by using GSL instead of say,
> Matlab when it comes to numerical methods. BTW - I am a beginner in
> MatLab, GSL, and numerical methods.
> 

Hi Jason,

/My/ thoughts on your question:

GSL has a number of characteristics which are different from Matlab, 
scilab and Mathematica. These are primarilay:

Licence: GSL has a Free licence. Matlab and Mathematica are propiretary. 
This can have have subtle and unexpected repercussions: for example, my 
Univeristy dept has a high Matlab dependence but has had to remove 
students ability to batch process Matlab jobs since this can only be 
performed legally using Matlab's batch processing engine - the licence 
for which my university can't afford. Scilab is Free, so the difference 
doesn't hold here.

Library vs Environment: GSL is just a library, Matlab, Matlab and Scilab 
provide a whole environment for rapidly prototyping/developing ideas and 
applications. This environment includes (most notably from my view) 
graphical output.

"... How much are we missing out on by using GSL instead of say,
Matlab when it comes to numerical methods... "

In my experience GSL is a mature and fully featured library. I have not 
found it wanting for my area of interest (physics, statistics, fitting). 
The documentation is solid and precise. After using it for a while I 
discovered that it I was learning numerical methods with more detail than 
high-level 'environment' users. However, gaining this knowledge to use 
GSL generally takes a little more effort.

Your choice should reflect your application or task. In my case I have 
had success prototyping in a high level 'environment' and then porting 
the high performance code to GSL when I wanted to start producing results.

best regards,
Richard





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