Maxima (Software)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_(software)

by Tomte • 5 years ago

126 55 5 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

I actually use maxima as a faster wolframalpha alternative. It doesn't look as polished but it gets the job done when solving or simplifying most equations.

pfortuny3• 5 years ago

I use this frequently for plotting planar vector fields: it is much better than Mathematica’s StreamPlot (which I am forced to use from time to time).

Also another colleague found out the hard way that maxima can happen to solve symbolic/arithmetic linear equations much faster (2 orders of magnitude) than Mathematica.

A great tool. A pity it is underestimated.

bitwize• 5 years ago

Ironic, considering that Stephen Wolfram insisted in the 80s that Lisp was 100x slower than C, and so a fast mathematics package could not be written in it.

p_l• 5 years ago

He was wrong then and now, but the crucial speedup of Mathematica vs Maxima was difference in modeling of data and how Mathematica could piggy back on fortran libraries for numerical solving, while Maxima focused on symbolic solving.

This meant that for many cases where numerical method was beneficial, Mathematica easily won on speed.

actually_a_dog• 5 years ago

That's hilarious, because the Wolfram Language is actually quite lispy. Or, at least you can write it in a very lispy style.

xvilka2• 5 years ago

Now Wolfram Language uses LLVM framework for compilation. SBCL-compiled Maxima is also quite fast .

jhgb6• 5 years ago

That's probably because Stephen Wolfram in the 80s knew little about Lisp. Chances are he still knows little about it today!

tzs• 5 years ago

The predecessor of Mathematica, Wolfram and Cole's SMP, was 10-100x faster than the best Lisp based symbolic math programs at the time on what Wolfram and Cole considered to be small to medium research physics problems. On large problems they were unable to compare because the Lisp based programs needed more memory than the VAX 11/780 at Caltech High Energy Physics had.

tubby12345• 5 years ago

can you give an example instance? I'll test on both.

pfortuny3• 5 years ago

For the vector fields just anyone with a couple of singularities would work. The moment you set unequal axes Mathematica blows up.

Sorry but am home. If you mail me during the week I shall find examples for you.

The matrix was something I saw happen, I do not have the example handy, sorry.

thayne2• 5 years ago

As a physics student, I often used maxima for assignments, because while I did have access to Mathematica on lab computers, having a CAS on my laptop was often more convenient. In general, it was able to do what I needed just as well as Mathematica, though with different syntax.

andi9992• 5 years ago

Which command do you use, and could you link an example?

pfortuny3• 5 years ago

No examples (home). Maxima: plotdf, Mathematica: Streamplot.

Sorry.

etaioinshrdlu2• 5 years ago

It says that Maxima also has its own programming language (written in Lisp). Any opinions on it good or bad?

reikonomusha• 5 years ago

It’s a rather plain language. Nothing too special about it. Has functions, variables, assignment, loops, and a few other rudiments.

rexpress• 5 years ago

It's been a few years since I used Maxima, which was at university but without much introduction to the language. The dynamic scoping was a particularly unpleasant surprise, lexical scoping was not available which lead to buggy behaviour. I returned to the warm embrace of Mathematica fairly quickly.

mkl4• 5 years ago

It's more like Maxima is a programming language. Its syntax is weird, archaic, and clunky, and different from anything else you've ever used for no reason except that it dates back to 1968, before C, before Pascal. Assignment uses ":", blocks of statements use "(" and ")", etc. Aside from the syntax, its features are mostly pretty basic and standard, and apart from mathematics quite limited.

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

In fairness, "predates every other option you might compare it to" really is a good excuse.

thayne2• 5 years ago

Its syntax is weird, archaic, and clunky,

Maybe if you come from a CS background. From a math background, it's syntax is actually more natural than most contemporary programming languages. For example, : is used for assignment, because = has the normal mathematical meaning. Blocks use parentheses because that's how you group stuff in math.

Maxima is very much a domain specific language, where the domain is mathematics.

marcodiego• 5 years ago

The wx-maxima[1] is a good GUI for maxima. A very nice mature FLOSS symbolic math package. For derivatives, integrals, simplification and many other uses I don't think it is nowhere weaker than proprietary alternatives.

[1] https://wxmaxima-developers.github.io/wxmaxima/

riedel• 5 years ago

SMath is a nice mathcad like interface with Maxima support

BeFlatXIII• 5 years ago

WxMaxima (+Igor Pro) is what got me through my P Chem and QM courses in college. The joy of teaching yourself linear algebra because they forgot to list it as a course requirement. Luckily all you really need is rref.

dotancohen2• 5 years ago

  > Luckily all you really need is rref.

Tell us more. Please. I'm going through linear right now.

turlando• 5 years ago

Unfortunately my experience is that Maxima is unable to get even simple integrations right.

If I remember correctly the state of the documentation was subpar too.

pfdietz4• 5 years ago

As I recall, the style of Lisp code in Maxima is very old fashioned. We wouldn't write Common Lisp like that today.

tkuraku• 5 years ago

Sagemath provides a python interface to maxima and uses it for some operations behind the scenes.

williamstein• 5 years ago

The Python interface with Maxima in Sage is pretty sophisticated in that it uses ECL (Embedded Common Lisp) to provide a high performance C level interface. The conversion code (for special functions, constants, etc.), is also nontrivial. Over the years we have tried to reduce the reliance on Maxima (eg for portability reasons) by instead seeing if we could use SymEngine or sympy or something else, but Maxima is pretty deep, eg it’s symbolic integration is still not easy to beat with sympy…

medo-bear3• 5 years ago

i know common lisp can be called by a maxima program. can maxima be used as a library in common lisp ?

jhgb6• 5 years ago

That's rather complicated because of its internal architecture. Also because Maxima is skewed towards interactive usage. Some of the routines need to ask you questions about the problem in the middle of the solution (things like "is a zero or non-zero?" and such). Perhaps such questions could be turned into conditions, though.

medo-bear3• 5 years ago

it would be cool if maxima could be used in such a way. similar to how sympy is used in python. i have a feeling it is definitely possible. maybe someone knows if any work on it has been done by some third party

Qem• 5 years ago

I'm more familiar with SymPy. How does it compare with Maxima? Does anyone have experience with both?

mkl4• 5 years ago

Being embedded in a nice modern programming language like Python, SymPy is definitely much easier to use, and I'd recommend that for most people. Maxima probably has some more advanced esoteric features I haven't needed, and may be faster for some things (but so might SymPy). I use Maxima in one situation: making online maths quiz questions in STACK [1], because Maxima is the CAS underlying it. I'd rather it used SymPy!

If you need more advanced stuff than SymPy, probably SageMath is the way to go - stay in ~Python, but use it as an interface to other systems (which include Maxima). I used to use Sage before SymPy was around and good.

[1] https://www.ed.ac.uk/maths/stack/

jhgb6• 5 years ago

Common Lisp is a nice modern programming language, too. Only SymPy yet has to be ported into it...

a0-prw• 5 years ago

There's a nice extension for MS Word that uses Maxima. WordMat https://github.com/Eduap-com/WordMat

dietrichepp• 5 years ago

I used Maxima for creating statistical models of hardware failure at work a while back.

I’d take the statistical models, use Maxima to symbolically find equations for estimators, and then write out the formulas in Python using NumPy / SciPy to solve the equations numerically. Without Maxima, the whole process would have involved more error-prone, tedious work on my part.

I like to pitch the model by saying it successfully predicted a data loss event before it happened, predicted where that data loss event would happen (which configuration would lose data), and gave us insight into how the system could be changed to prevent similar data loss events from happening. Maxima was a key tool in making the model.

iamcreasy• 5 years ago

Wow, sounds cool! Could you please share more details. What statistical model, and what estimators had to find? I have some theoretical statistical training, and I am under the assuming you can use MLE or some other estimator to find the parameter of a model.

Maxima (Software)

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