[Techtalk] Maths and Matrices

[Carlo Hamalainen]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Sue Stones wrote:
> Can anyone tell me what Linux packages can be used for doing maths processing
> on linux.  In particular at the moment I want to deal with matrices.  I would
> like to be able to print matrices properly.

What exactly do you mean by printing the matrices?

As someone else on the thread mentioned, octave is a good choice, and is
even compatible with Matlab's M-files. If you want plain text printouts of
matrices, octave will do this (see end of this email). Or, if you want to
get them into a LaTeX document, a short script can be written (let me know
if you're interested).

Or, I'm sure that octave's output can be pasted into some spreadsheet
package and printed from there...

-- Carlo

Sample octave session, solving a random 3x3 system of equations, ie.
Ax = b.

octave:1> rand
ans = 0.98015
octave:2> A = rand(3,3)
A =

  0.031095  0.095578  0.033591
  0.494036  0.266186  0.764909
  0.088899  0.343124  0.504444

octave:3> b = rand(3,1)
b =

  0.089730
  0.023149
  0.871475

octave:4> A\b
ans =

  -2.6556
   1.3551
   1.2739

octave:5>