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mfrench13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
February 10, 2015
Question

Need Alternative for my Students

  • February 10, 2015
  • 3 replies
  • 19847 views

I work at a large university and just found out that our computer people are uninstalling the few remaining seats of Mathcad in my college (if a university was a company, a college would be a division). Unhappily, Mathcad is effectively being removed from my college. We can buy licenses for $500 per seat, but there isn't enough money; 50 seats would be $25,000.

I had planned to stick with MCAD 15 for another year or two, but I'm afraid circumstances may be forcing my hand.

If you were going to introduce a number crunching program to undergraduate students who often have no prior experience, which of these would you pick:

- Mathematica

- MATLAB

- Maple

These are all widely available on campus and there is a user base to rely on. I like MATLAB and it's really easy to get (Amazon), but the programming interface is dated and simulink has a learning curve. Maple is easy to get (Amazon), seems to be both easy to learn and capable. Mathematica is very powerful and easy to get, but there is a learning curve. Also, it's related to the Wolfram Alpha web site that everyone already uses. Mathematica is probably the easiest sell, partly because of the web site and partly because some students already have already used it in high school.

Thanks for your input 🙂

3 replies

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RichardJ19-Tanzanite
19-Tanzanite
February 10, 2015

You will get a more informed, and therefore probably more useful, answer if you provide more information.

What discipline or subject (based on previous posts, I believe some sort of engineering)?

Do you want unit handling?

Numeric math or symbolic math, or both?

Is a WSIWYG interface (or something close to it) important?

How much computing power do you really need?

etc etc. The more information you can provide the better

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mfrench13-AquamarineAuthor
13-Aquamarine
February 11, 2015

Fair enough. Thanks for taking time to reply.

- My students are studying mechanical engineering technology.

- Unit handling is one of the features that makes Mathcad attractive to my students. They find it particularly useful for unit conversions.

- At first, I think they use Mathcad mostly for numeric calculations. However, they move onto symbolic math once they get familiar with the program. So, the answer would be both.

- The WYSIWYG interface of Mathcad is perhaps its best feature. It's the thing I and my students would most miss.

- We really don't need a lot of computing power. Mathcad mostly gets used for homework and class projects. We are not generally power users, though some of the grad students do more sophisticated calculations.

Mathcad is useful for us because it's easy to learn and does all the calculations we need without a lot of fuss. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd fix some formatting things on Prime 3.0 along with some other simple stuff. After that, the switch would be fairly painless.

As it is, I can't, for example, make big deal in class of properly formatting a plot and then ask them to use software that can't even label the axes. However, that wouldn't be a big fix if PTC chose to address it. My other gripes right now are equally minor, but are still, unfortunately, deal breakers.

I have to say that I'm a little surprised some other company hasn't stepped into the void created by PTC.

F
Fred_Kohlhepp23-Emerald I
23-Emerald I
February 11, 2015

Based (primarily) on the "We really don't need a lot of computing power" comment, and the desire for unit handling and WSIWYG appearance I have to ask: Would Prime Express (which is free) fill most of your needs?

As far as formatting plots goes, push the data over to EXCEL and have at it!

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mfrench13-AquamarineAuthor
13-Aquamarine
February 21, 2015

Hi Folks,

Just a quick update. I've now got Maple on both of the machines I use and am trying it out. So far, it seems to be about halfway between Mathematica and Mathcad. It's very powerful, like Mathematica. The user interface is not bad, but not as intuitive as Mathcad. It will probably take a little time to get comfortable with it, but I'm coming off of something like 25 years as a Mathcad user (started with version 1.1). I may have some habits to unlearn.

T
tcampbell1-Visitor
1-Visitor
November 30, 2015

I'm curious as to how Maple has worked out for you?  I'm looking for a tool to help with engineering design work.  Mainly solving simple systems of equations, plotting, occasional symbolic derivatives and, once in a while, curve fitting.  The output from the tool is as much for documenting the design as it is for doing math, so format/presentation are important.  I don't have any experience with either Mathcad or Maple and suspect Mathcad Prime would work fine for me, but am reluctant to give money to PTC after reading many, many complaints about Mathcad Prime (including even the latest 3.1 version).

If you were starting fresh and had both options, which way would you go?

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RichardJ19-Tanzanite
19-Tanzanite
December 1, 2015

The complaints about Mathcad Prime are largely in comparison to Mathcad 15, which has a lot more capability. Based on your brief description of your needs Prime will do everything you want though, and the format/presentation is better than Maple.

H
hughes1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 15, 2020

We use SwiftCalcs here at our university, It's a great alternative since there is no software to install, everything is on the cloud. It has a simple interface, easy to use, full unit support, database of materials. It's pretty complete

While it's not free, they do offer rebates for bulk educational licences 

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Werner_E25-Diamond I
25-Diamond I
January 15, 2020

I had not heard about SwiftCalcs so far and I looked it up and watched a few of the tutorial videos.

Its sure an interesting and capable software. Can't tell about how strong the symbolic is or how capable the numeric solvers. But at least it can solve basic ODEs symbolically, too.

I think I would miss the white board interface of Mathcad, making it such a nice mathematical scatch pad.

And I sure would dislike the idea of it being a cloud based application being available online only (I know that others would see this as a benefit not being forced to install a software on their computer and being able to access it from any device with an internet connection and a browser).

And as is the case with Mathcad now, too, I dislike strongly the idea of a non-perpetual license which means that I am denied access to my own IP if I don't pay on a regular basis. In case of Mathcad its a monthly fee, in case of SwiftCalcs it seems to be a monthly fee.

But anyway - its one of the few kind of math software which also can handle units in a natural and intuitive way and from what I had seen in the short time it looks like the app it pretty capable and useful for engineering work.

Haven't seen how it does when it comes to customize formatting plots, 3D-plots or creating reports for customers.

Anyway - thanks for the input!

 

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