TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY NEWS & REVIEWS

Editor: Norman Chonacky, [email protected]

MAPLE, MATHEMATICA, AND MATLAB:

THE 3M’S WITHOUT THE TAPE

By Norman Chonacky and David Winch

I N THIS, THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF TECHNOL-

OGY REVIEWS THAT WILL APPEAR IN THE

NEXT SEVERAL ISSUES OF CiSE, WE’LL EXPLORE

with or without registration. This gives the feeling that
Maplesoft wants to unlock your imagination quickly.
Matlab also came on three CD-ROMs. The installation,
however, was much less smooth—at least for us. We both had
to try a few times, and the installer occasionally balked. But
Matlab is a very complex product: its modular design includes
THE THREE PREEMINENT PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS innumerable toolboxes that extend the core to serve a wide
variety of specialized science and engineering tasks. Further,
for scientific and engineering computation. Although hardly we were installing the Mac version, which MathWorks has
identical, the packages have extensive similarities in the only relatively recently made available again, so this is not en-
computational work they’re intended to support. In areas in tirely surprising. Overall, Matlab gives the feeling that Math-
which they overlap, we’ll look at how they compare, even as Works’ engineering is practical, uncompromised by ego.
we contrast their scopes where they extend beyond one an-
other. Given that you probably already use one of these Histories
tools sets, our goal is to help you decide whether one of In making the case for style, as well as to get clues about
them as now packaged is better suited to your temperament their goals and objectives, we begin with brief histories of
or your current technological practice than when you made these products, extracted from their own presentations
your original choice. In each article, we’ll examine how about themselves. First, let’s look at some pieces prefacing
these packages support one of three different categories of the 1,464-page The Mathematica Book (5th edition, Wolfram
professional work: undergraduate education, scientific and Media, 2003), itself a monument to the self-confidence of
engineering computation, and technical communication and its author, Steven Wolfram:
publication.
Having started to use computers in 1973, Wolfram ... in 1979
Out of the Gate began the construction of SMP—the first modern computer al-
If computer programs can be said to have “style” or “per- gebra system, which he released commercially in 1981 ... It is
sonality,” the three application packages we’ll be exploring often said that the release of Mathematica marked the beginning
reveal themselves right from the start: the installation of modern technical computing. Ever since the 1960s individ-
process. Although the user must face it only once, we be- ual packages had existed for specific numerical, algebraic, graph-
lieve the details of this process prefigure a consistent differ- ical and other tasks ... The concept of Mathematica was a single
ence among the products. system that could handle all [these tasks] ... Wolfram began the
Mathematica came on one CD-ROM, installed itself development of Mathematica in late 1986. The first version ...
quickly and slickly, putting its icon directly on the Macin- was released on June 23, 1988 ... [as] the world’s only fully inte-
tosh desktop “dock” without asking. However, before you grated environment for technical computing.
can do anything with it, you must register the license num-
ber over the Web, thus getting a password to unlock the The application’s foundation was in mathematics, but it
package for execution. This gives the feeling that Wolfram evolved into a general tool for technical computing. From
Research, the product’s creator, is in control. day one, it was also a commercial product that signaled the
By contrast, Maple came on three CD-ROMs, installed founding of Wolfram Research.
on our disk of choice—though only after we deduced that Keep in mind that Steven Wolfram was first a physicist
the name of the chosen hard-disk partition needed to be and that Mathematica is a creature of his mind. Indeed, in
changed—and provided immediate access to the program, reading through this history, it’s difficult to separate the

8 Copublished by the IEEE CS and the AIP 1521-9615/05/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE COMPUTING IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
 EDITOR IN CHIEF
Norman Chonacky
[email protected]

product from its author. Clearly, the product is an expres- ASSOCIATE EDITORS IN CHIEF
sion of the person. The goal is to dramatically alter the way Denis Donnelly, Siena College
we think about, and do, science and engineering—other en- [email protected]
terprises can join in “if they dare.”
Douglass E. Post, Los Alamos Nat’l Lab.
Some of the themes of Wolfram’s driving passion also [email protected]
emerge here: integration and unification, changing the face
of technical computing and the way we think about the John Rundle, Univ. of California at Davis
[email protected]
world. The latter becomes even clearer in the parts of the
preface that are more predictive than historical: Francis Sullivan, IDA Ctr. for Computing Sciences
[email protected]
Wolfram’s papers on cellular automata led to a major shift in sci-
entific thinking and laid the groundwork for a new field of sci- EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
ence that Wolfram named “complex systems research.” … Fol- Klaus-Jürgen Bathe, Mass. Inst. of Technology, [email protected]
lowing the release of Mathematica Version 2 in 1991, Wolfram Antony Beris, Univ. of Delaware, [email protected]
began to divide his time between Mathematica development and Michael W. Berry, Univ. of Tennessee, [email protected]
scientific research. Building on his work from the mid-1980s (on
John Blondin, North Carolina State Univ., [email protected]
complexity and cellular automata), and now with Mathematica
David M. Ceperley, Univ. of Illinois, [email protected]
as a tool, ... Wolfram finally described ... in A New Kind of Sci-
Michael J. Creutz, Brookhaven Nat’l Lab., [email protected]
ence, released on May 14, 2002, a paradigm shift of historic im-
George Cybenko, Dartmouth College, [email protected]
portance in science.
Jack Dongarra, Univ. of Tennessee, [email protected]
Rudolf Eigenmann, Purdue Univ., [email protected]
Are you ready for Mathematica? Then you’d better fasten
your seat belt! David Eisenbud, Mathematical Sciences Research Inst., [email protected]

Compare and contrast this with a piece on Maple’s history, William J. Feiereisen, Los Alamos Nat’l Lab, [email protected]

extracted from the Fall 2001 issue of The Maple Reporter, the Sharon Glotzer, Univ. of Michigan, [email protected]
Waterloo Maple newsletter: Anthony C. Hearn, RAND, [email protected]
Charles J. Holland, Office of the Defense Dept.,
From its humble beginnings as a research project at a university [email protected]

to the position of an influential technology in education, re- M.Y. Hussaini, Florida State Univ., [email protected]
search, and industry, Maple has fundamentally changed the way David Kuck, KAI Software, Intel, [email protected]
we do math … [reflecting] how the mathematical community it- David P. Landau, Univ. of Georgia, [email protected]
self has evolved. … In the ’80s, Maple was a pure programming B. Vincent McKoy, California Inst. of Technology,
language optimized for mathematical applications. In the early [email protected]
’90s Maple V Releases 1 through 4 saw … development of the Jill P. Mesirov, Whitehead/MIT Ctr. for Genome Research,
Maple user interface ... to display mathematics in high resolu- [email protected]

tion ... [and] dynamically interact with 3D plots … [facilitating] Yoichi Muraoka, Waseda Univ., [email protected]
student use. In the late ’90s, Release 5 introduced Web publish- Kevin J. Northover, Open Text, [email protected]
ing ... enabling Maple documents [to be] translated to profes- Andrew M. Odlyzko, Univ. of Minnesota, [email protected]
sional HTML pages for rapid publication on the Web…Maple Charles Peskin, Courant Inst. of Mathematical Sciences,
6 and 7 establish a new standard … [of] connectivity with other [email protected]
software. The Maple Application and Student Centers ... [help] Constantine Polychronopoulos, Univ. of Illinois, [email protected]
users take advantage of … a living concept continually enriched William H. Press, Los Alamos Nat’l Lab., [email protected]
and expanded by the energy and creativity of its user base. John Rice, Purdue Univ., [email protected]
Ahmed Sameh, Purdue Univ., [email protected]
From its birth, also in mathematics, Maple was conceived Henrik Schmidt, MIT, [email protected]
as a tool for expression as well as computation. Its develop- Donald G. Truhlar, Univ. of Minnesota, [email protected]
ers were fostering a mathematical and scientific commu- Margaret H. Wright, Bell Lab., [email protected]
nity—anticipating, if not driving, the evolution of science

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 9
 TECHNOLOGY NEWS & REVIEWS

and engineering into a collaborative, group-centered enter- been evolutionary as much as revolutionary. Compromises
prise. Within a “communitarian” ethos, Maple aims to be intended to make Maple as accessible as possible to the
accessible to students as well as researchers. The details of greatest number of users have guided its development strat-
its evolution are amplified in a more personal account taken egy both before and since commercialization. Given that the
from an interview with Keith Geddes, cofounder of Water- trajectory of Maple’s development and commercialization
loo Maple, also in the Fall 2001 issue of The Maple Reporter: were critically determined by the culture of its time, we
wonder if this “communitarian” enterprise would perhaps
In the autumn of 1980, I called a meeting of various Computer have followed the open-source software development path
Science faculty of the University of Waterloo to discuss the idea entirely if begun today.
of how we could get … a system like MACSYMA ... It was at this From the MathWorks Web site (www.mathworks.com)
meeting, in November 1980, that the Maple system was con- we get this brief account of its history:
ceived. ... By the first week in December we had an operational
Maple system, and it evolved from there. … By January of 1981, Matlab began life in 1984 as a response [to a] recognized need
we started using Maple in a course, “Introduction to Symbolic among engineers and scientists for more … productive compu-
Computation” ... Mathematicians started to use the system for tation environments [than] those provided by languages such as
research in 1982. By 1983, researchers at various institutions Fortran and C. [It is] a high-performance technical computing
environment … combining comprehensive math and graphics
functions with a powerful high-level language … Our goal [was
Compromises intended to make Maple and] is to change the world by accelerating the pace of discov-
ery, innovation, development, and learning in engineering and
as accessible as possible...have guided science … [with a] computing environment for technical com-
putation, visualization, simulation, design, and implementation.
its development strategy.
MathWorks’ founders combined their expertise in math-
ematics, engineering, and computer science to develop Mat-
lab; this is reflected in the emergence, through the years, of
various “tool boxes” designed to make applications easy to
were using [it] in various other disciplines, including computer develop for a wide range of disciplines. In this sense, we get
science, engineering, physics, and economics … and there were the feeling that Matlab invites and facilitates collaboration
about 50 installations … By 1987 there were 300 installations between, and conjoining of, various disciplines. These val-
worldwide ... In April of 1988, we incorporated Waterloo Maple ues are reflected in MathWorks’ mission statement:
Software ... to market, distribute, and support Maple … and by
1990 the installed base grew to 2000. At the MathWorks, we express who we are as an organization
through our guiding principle, our mission, and our core values.
Maple is a creature of academics and a product of the Developed over time, each represents a philosophy or goal that
academe. Its developers gave away the first distributions, is intrinsically important to the organization ... Our guiding
spawned by interest at conferences, for roughly the cost of principle is “Do the Right Thing,” … meaning doing what is
the media. What is perhaps not so obvious from this histor- best for our staff members, customers, business partners, and
ical account, is how much of an afterthought commercial- communities for the long term… It also means measuring our
ization was. Geddes explicates this in his interview: success … by how consistently we act according to this princi-
ple. Our mission and core values express what “doing the right
Until 1990 or so, it was never about making a commercially suc- thing” means in our day-to-day work … Our [technological
cessful product. Our vision was about creating a powerful sys- mission] is to change the world by accelerating the pace of dis-
tem for symbolic mathematics. covery, innovation, development, and learning in engineering
and science … [We want our] core values, … essential and en-
From this history, we conclude that Maple’s development, during principles …. unaffected by the trends of the day or
direction, and driving force have always been communal and changing market conditions, … [to be] understood and practiced
pragmatic rather than individualistic. Its perspective has throughout the organization.

10 COMPUTING IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

 EDITORIAL OFFICE
COMPUTING in SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014
Los Alamitos, CA 90720
phone +1 714 821 8380; fax +1 714 821 4010;
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DEPARTMENT EDITORS
Book & Web Reviews: Bruce Boghosian, Tufts Univ., bruce.boghosian@
tufts.edu
Computing Prescriptions: Isabel Beichl, Nat’l Inst. of Standards and
The site lists the “core values” as continuous improve- Tech., [email protected], and Julian Noble, Univ. of Virginia,
ment and the pursuit of excellence, respect and investment [email protected]
Computer Simulations: Dietrich Stauffer, Univ. of Köhn, stauffer@
(for individuals), rational workplace, learning and self-im- thp.uni-koeln.de
provement, and credibility and integrity. MathWorks’ ap- Education: Denis Donnelly, Siena College, [email protected]
proach to product development and work environment is Scientific Programming: Paul Dubois, Lawrence Livermore Nat’l Labs,
[email protected], and George K. Thiruvathukal, [email protected]
consistent with those in many of the most technologically Technology News & Reviews: Norman Chonacky, Columbia Univ.,
advanced industries. This suggests that Matlab is going to [email protected]
feel very much like, and fulfill the expectations of, a profes- Visualization Corner: Jim X. Chen, George Mason Univ., [email protected],
and R. Bowen Loftin, Old Dominion Univ., [email protected]
sional engineering design package. Your Homework Assignment: Dianne P. O’Leary, Univ. of Maryland,
[email protected]
Design Objectives
Taking cues from their histories and advertising copy as rep- STAFF
resentative, we deduced several design objectives for each of Senior Editor: Jenny Ferrero, [email protected]
these products. Here, from the Mathematica Web site Group Managing Editor: Gene Smarte
(www.wolfram.com) and the book’s preface: Staff Editors: Kathy Clark-Fisher, Rebecca L. Deuel, and Steve Woods
Contributing Editors: Cheryl Baltes and Joan Taylor
Production Editor: Monette Velasco
The visionary concept of Mathematica was to create … a single
Magazine Assistant: Hazel Kosky, [email protected]
system that could handle all the various aspects of technical com- Technical Illustrations: Alex Torres
puting in a coherent and unified way. A key ... [was] a new kind
of symbolic computer language that could … manipulate the Publisher: Angela Burgess, [email protected]
very wide range of objects involved in technical computing us- Assistant Publisher: Dick Price
Advertising Coordinator: Marian Anderson
ing only a fairly small number of basic primitives.
Marketing Manager: Georgann Carter
Business Development Manager: Sandra Brown
At a technical level, Mathematica ... is one of the largest single-
application programs ever developed ... Among its core innova-
AIP STAFF
tions are its interconnected algorithm knowledge base and its
Jeff Bebee, Circulation Director, [email protected]
concepts of symbolic programming and document-centered in- Charles Day, Editorial Liaison, [email protected]
terfaces.
IEEE ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION SOCIETY LIAISON
Although not part of the testimony, it appears that a
Don Wilton, Univ. of Houston, [email protected]
Mathematica design criterion is elegance. Consistent with
this conclusion is that pragmatism must not be a core IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING SOCIETY LIAISON
value at Wolfram Research. A description of the com- Elias S. Manolakos, Northeastern Univ., [email protected]

pany’s “character,” appearing on its Web site, reinforces CS MAGAZINE OPERATIONS COMMITTEE
this notion: Bill Schilit (chair), Jean Bacon, Pradip Bose, Doris L. Carver, Norman
Chonacky, George Cybenko, John C. Dill, Frank E. Ferrante, Robert E.
Wolfram Research’s leadership … stems from its ability to set Filman, Forouzan Golshani, David Alan Grier, Rajesh Gupta, Warren
Harrison, James Hendler, M. Satyanarayanan
the direction for new technology. The Wolfram Group is char-
acterized by an individualist approach, a “no compromises” at- CS PUBLICATIONS BOARD
titude to design, welcoming of innovation, a deep respect for the Michael R. Williams (chair), Michael R. Blaha, Mark Christensen, Roger U.
Fujii, Sorel Reisman, Jon Rokne, Bill Schilit, Linda Shafer, Steven L.
… user base and users’ suggestions, and constant search for good Tanimoto, Anand Tripathi
general approaches rather than quick fixes.

Ever the revolutionary, systematic unifier, and grand en-

terpriser, Wolfram will take us where humans have never P IEEE Antennas &
Propagation Society
A
gone before. We should thus expect more sophisticated, S
novel, integrated, elegant (and possibly more proprietary IEEE
Signal Processing Society
and expensive) software from Mathematica in the future.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 11
 TECHNOLOGY NEWS & REVIEWS

To contrast, here are some Maple design objectives, again MatLab is fundamentally a matrix-oriented product—
extracted from The Maple Reporter: MatLab is short for “matrix laboratory.” Aside from its “do
the right thing” unifying principle and firm belief that “a
The primary goal [was] to design a computer algebra system that right solution” always exists, MathWorks leaves us to infer
would be accessible to large numbers of researchers in mathe- its design objectives from the de facto evidence presented
matics, engineering, and science, and to large numbers of stu- by its product.
dents for educational purposes ... transforming the way engi- Given Matlab’s long list of components, MathWorks
neers and scientists use technology. seems to prize modularity. Matlab’s core—a computational
engine and I/O facilities—handles common functions for a
Maple’s creators planned to employ “a special architecture wide variety of toolboxes, which enable developers in nu-
and highly intuitive, refined command set,” allowing rapid merous disciplinary areas to create applications without
development of algorithms and fast porting to various op- (re)building entire systems. This approach’s pragmatism and
erating systems. Among fundamental criteria, the company economy are consistent with an engineer’s mentality, which
listed an insistence on space efficiency and time efficiency in prizes these values. Accordingly, we expect that Matlab will
its efforts to create and manage supportive resources for continue to spawn specialty toolboxes, and that the company
users, “demonstrating our commitment to the second part will nurture the collaborative development of specialized ap-
plications with industrial and academic partners.
From this examination of history and design principles,
Given Matlab’s long list of components, we conclude that all parties are designing their products
generally to meet their stated explicit (and implicit) objec-
MathWorks seems to prize modularity. tives. To the extent that these coincide with their proclivi-
ties and needs, users should find one or another product
congenial. Of course, all companies are subject to market
pressures in a competitive world, so we can’t assume—how-
ever strong their insistences to the contrary—that some
of our vision: making it easy for more people to use Maple.” market shift might not present compelling reasons for any
Given this design ethos, we thought it would be interest- of them to reinvent themselves.
ing to compare these earlier design criteria to Maple’s fea- As an example of how the market can influence a product’s
tures as they exist today. As described in the promotional development objectives, consider spreadsheets. Who could
material on Maplesoft’s Web site (www.maplesoft.com), cur- have guessed that a product originally intended for the busi-
rent capabilities and resources include ness world would be used for science and engineering sim-
ulations? We never used VisiCalc, but we understand that it
• a context-intelligent right-click operation menu and an was the progenitor of the general spreadsheet application
extensive selection of user-interface features obviating the program. Indeed, it was popular enough to get people to use
need to memorize commands; the rather primitive Control Program/Monitor (CP/M) op-
• interactive visualization to let users explore data efficiently erating system. It didn’t take long for Microsoft to translate
and intuitively; the VisiCalc concept into Excel for the DOS and Mac plat-
• extensive connectivity features, including Microsoft Ex- forms, both of which were more advanced than CP/M.
cel, Matlab, TCP/IP, and OpenMaple; The spreadsheet’s paradigmatic rows and columns look
• programming language features, intuitive syntax, easy de- like transplants from the accountant’s desk, but one of us
bugging, and a rich feature set to support complex appli- (Chonacky) remembers seeing his first simulations com-
cations; and puted using a spreadsheet—at a physics meeting, of all
• free resources, as embodied by the Maple Application places—and being amazed at the obvious simplicity of pro-
Center. gramming simulations this way. Although looking at a
spreadsheet, he was seeing the electrostatic equipotentials
Based on this, we should expect Maple’s future releases to be for a point-charge distribution. Who’d have thought it?
more usable, understandable, publishable, and possibly more It’s likely that the science and engineering marketplace led
economical. to the expansion of this accountant’s tool to include a pack-

12 COMPUTING IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

age of scientific and mathematical functional routines, as mics, and their applications are pedagogical. On the other
well as graphics and curve fitting, as parts of the standard Ex- hand, titles wouldn’t reveal commercial users, who are un-
cel application. likely to publish the results of their proprietary application-
development work as books.
Uses Whether deserved or not, but perhaps as a consequence
In this review series, we’re not taking on a systematic study of its grand vision, Wolfram Research is widely perceived,
of Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab users’ current practices. among academics, as unwilling to concede to pricing that
Companies closely guard the comprehensive profiles of their smaller players—modest universities and small colleges—
products’ installation bases as “marketing secrets.” Thus, we can afford. Small businesses might similarly feel this pinch,
must be content with generalized corporate-advertising but we have no input from them regarding pricing pressures
claims and anecdotal examples drawn from small user sam- at this time. To the extent that this perception is correct,
ples identified to satisfy diversity profiles. The latter we will however, the academic users are probably disproportionately
leave to subsequent Tech News reviews in this series; but the from large research universities. This grand vision might
former we can draw from several places. also be responsible for driving up Mathematica’s cost—an
approach that seems to favor commercial users, for whom
Mathematica
From the Mathematica Book’s preface, we get the following:
Mathematica is clearly
At first, Mathematica’s impact was felt mainly in the physical sci-
ences, engineering and mathematics. But over the years, [it] has
a big player with big players.
become important in a remarkably wide range of fields … phys-
ical, biological, and social sciences, and other fields outside the
sciences, ... all of the Fortune 50 companies, all 15 major de-
partments of the US government, and all the [world’s] 50 largest productivity, rather than cost, tends to be the primary crite-
universities. rion for software decisions, even in small companies.

And from the Mathematica Web site: Maple

Much of what we can conclude about Maple’s users comes
In engineering, Mathematica … [is a] tool for development and from the software’s development history. Maple seems con-
production. In commerce, [it] has played a significant role in ... sistently inclined toward its “family of origin” in the acade-
financial modeling, as well as ... general planning and analysis. mic community. In fairness, however, it’s also worthwhile to
[It] has also emerged as an important tool in computer science look at how Maplesoft presents its product in its public-re-
and software development: its language component is widely lations material:
used as a research, prototyping, and interface environment.
Maple 9.5 is the environment of choice for scientific and en-
Mathematica is clearly a big player with big players. In gineering problem-solving, mathematical exploration, data vi-
light of assertions about its widespread use in industry and sualization, and technical authoring. [It] transforms the way
government, Mathematica seems to have gone the way of technical professionals and students use technology, ... inte-
the spreadsheet, though in the opposite sense—that is, a tool grating the power of … numerics with … symbolics [with] full
invented primarily to make the conduct of science and en- computing support for any activity involving mathematics ...
gineering more rational has found its way, via the market, it allows [the user] to encapsulate and manage technical
into other areas and applications. knowledge. In industry, [it] facilitates true collaborative
A search of Amazon.com’s book catalog, using “Mathe- knowledge management. In the classroom, [it] frees the stu-
matica in the title, author, or subject” as the criteria, re- dent and teacher to focus on concepts ... A rich user environ-
turned 593 items. A quick inspection of the titles reveals that ment ... shortens the learning curve and maximizes produc-
most of these are about pure or applied mathematics, rather tivity gains.
than applications of mathematics to other disciplines. This
suggests that a substantial number of the users are acade- This suggests that different messages are being aimed at two

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 13
 TECHNOLOGY NEWS & REVIEWS

different communities: academics and industry users. In- with supplementary resources that are specifically suited to
deed, it was interesting to examine two separate brochures industry and academe. The capabilities its products share,
that Maplesoft had prepared for that very purpose. Note the conditioned by their common Maple core, are mathemati-
similar but individually tailored “summary statements” from cal computation, visualization, and integrated communica-
these two brochures. For industry: tions. Moreover, the emphasis seems to be on serving broad
constituents who require common mathematical tools rather
Highly integrated product suite delivers a flexible platform to than on transforming the way that users view their respec-
compute, deploy, and share technical information. tive worlds.
Yet there are indications, both in this advertising strategy
For academe: and in the product-evolution history, that Maple is primar-
ily an academician’s tool whose user community Maplesoft
Highly integrated product suite and an extensive set of free re- would like to expand to businesses. This is not because it
sources increase the effectiveness and efficiency of any academic lacks computational sophistication or power, but because it
activity that depends on mathematical information. grew out of the minds of academic mathematicians and has
been tuned to their needs.
Querying Amazon.com’s book catalog, using “Maple in
We don’t intend to try to prove, the title, author, or subject” as the search criteria, returned
668 items. A quick inspection of titles reveals that roughly
and will not assert, that one two-thirds of these were unrelated to Maple software, re-
ferring instead to author names and maple trees. The
package is better than another. roughly 200 others were divided between pure or applied
mathematics and mathematics related to other academic dis-
ciplines. There were proportionately more of the latter than
there were for Mathematica.

The company offers two different descriptions of the possible Matlab

uses for Maple’s three principle components. For industry: Based on the engineering flavor embedded in the design
strategy, company values, and, most significantly, the tool-
MapleNet enables enterprise-wide collaboration through shar- box components’ character (many of which embody labora-
ing results data and analytical knowledge over the Web. Profes- tory or system design capabilities), we expected Matlab to
sional toolboxes offer domain-specific tools to transform the be more widely represented in this book catalog search than
core [Maple] ... to discipline-specific applications. Resources/ser- the other two packages.
vices [afford] ... Web resources. Querying Amazon’s book catalog using “Matlab in the ti-
tle, author, or subject” as the search criteria, we located 366
For academe: items. A quick inspection of the titles reveals that these cover
a wider range of disciplines than either Mathematica or
MapleNet is a full environment for online, e-learning, provid- Maple. Many of the titles were for engineering disciplines and
ing an … interactive Web-based environment … for [educa- applications. It is also notable that a significant number of the
tional] content creation [and] deployment. Maple T.A. ... for toolboxes are available only for Windows rather than for
Web-based testing and assessment includes access control, in- Macintosh or Linux—consistent with the fact that Windows
teractive grade book, algorithmic question generation, and in- machines are ubiquitous in the engineering community.
telligent assessment of mathematical responses. The Maple Ap-
plication Center offers … free downloadable resources ... simple New Approach for Technology Reviews
classroom demos, curricula for entire courses ... in calculus, dif- We’re hoping this series of reviews will serve as a practical
ferential equations, classical mechanics, linear algebra, statistics, instrument for scientists and engineers to use in selecting
etc. application software. Given that this is a learning process for
both the writers and readers, let’s move context to the fore-
Maplesoft appears willing to support its “dual use” product front: we know that knowledge is context-dependent, so un-

14 COMPUTING IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

 A New Kind of Review

W e’re dedicating multiple Technology Reviews to the same cluster of products for several reasons. First, we want to
see how you, our readers, respond to various content and presentation styles. Since the merger of our precur-
sors—AIP Computers in Physics and IEEE Computational Science and Engineering—we’ve conducted readers’ surveys, but to
get more detailed knowledge of our readership, we want to engage you in a process of feedback and modification. Focus-
ing multiple reviews on these technologies will provide a concrete set of points using a single context for a continuing dia-
logue on specific issues that readers raise. Running the reviews in sequential issues will offer time and multiple opportunities
for readers to respond and for us to react with modifications.
Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab are so widely used that a justifiably detailed and comprehensive discussion of them
would be too lengthy for a single issue. Presenting them in this manner will also let us test a new approach to the technol-
ogy review format—one of increased depth, wedded closely to the user’s experience, based on illustrative case studies, and
introducing a metric of contrast that relates the critique to some standard of comparison.
Our goal is to increase the Technology Reviews’ substance and practical utility to CiSE readers. For this, we’ll need your
attention, help, and feedback. We thus invite you to submit comments and critiques on these articles’ content and style.
Next issue, we’ll have details on several ways to respond to us, along with the first review installation—on undergraduate
educational use. Don’t miss it!

derstanding and interpreting these packages’ capabilities will ages from one of three user perspectives: an instructor of un-
necessarily be related to how and where they are applied— dergraduate science and engineering students; an R&D per-
their use context. Accordingly, we’ll try to explicitly define the son looking to perform scientific or engineering computa-
uses we have in mind when formulating each critique. tions; and an instructor, researcher, or student who needs to
Please remember that this review series is an experiment. communicate technical work to others in situ or otherwise
We’ll try to keep in mind that our critiques must connect publish science and engineering material.
practically to a wide variety of users and uses. But only you From each perspective, in turn, we’ll examine several ca-
can evaluate whether they advance your understanding of pabilities. The first of these are functional capabilities—that
the products and improve your ability to judge their capa- is, what kinds of tasks can we perform in each of the three
bilities and suitability. We hope at least some of you will pro- use areas? Pressed by considerable course loads, for exam-
vide feedback to help us accomplish these ends. ple, the undergraduate instructor might need to create and
Given these productivity applications’ enormous scope and revise presentation materials quickly. This instructor might
potential, readers will interpret critical reviews in a wide va- also need to visualize very difficult (to visualize) concepts for
riety of ways. To reduce the ambiguity of interpretation, we’ll highly heterogeneous student groups. Alternatively, the sci-
rely on specific use contexts to illustrate the capabilities we entist might require facile management capabilities in order
address in each segment. Specifically, each installment will to analyze data sets from a matrix of experiments. The en-
focus on the productivity packages’ technical capabilities in gineer might need high computational accuracy and the
one of three use categories: undergraduate education; science ability to explore large parameter spaces for optimization.
and engineering research computation; and science and en- Students and instructors, in particular, will often wish to
gineering communication and publication. place their material on the Web, but any of these individu-
The reviews will headline case studies—practical exam- als should be able to create unambiguous output for com-
ples of how the products have been or might be used—from munication and publication.
which we’ll try to build some general characteristics, pat- Another issue of concern is the accessibility and clarity
terns, or “morals” that might be helpful for others in mak- of the materials (program code, metadata, notation, prove-
ing their own evaluations. In choosing illustrative cases, we’ll nance, and so on) produced using these tools. For exam-
attempt to fairly represent a span of use settings—industry, ple, instructors assigning homework in a given product
research laboratory, and academe. will need to understand the program code their students
We don’t intend to try to prove, and will not assert, that one write. Researchers might also need transparency in com-
package is better than another. Rather, our comparative-re- putational programs to allow other R&D team members
view methodology is intended to present a basis for each to scrutinize the original calculations from their own view-
reader to create a personal metric for comparing the packages. points. The question of provenance is also important
when working in teams—who wrote what and when—to
What You Will See, What You Might Expect ensure version concurrence. Instructors and researchers
Each article in this series will approach the use of these pack- creating tutorial materials need great flexibility in pro-

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 15
 TECHNOLOGY NEWS & REVIEWS

ducing notation and in formatting their narratives so that In future reviews, we’ll also assess issues such as the
their materials’ appearance is never slave to the technol- three packages’ performance, interoperability, and learn-
ogy used to render it. ing curves, which are important to varying degrees to the
Sometimes we fail to appreciate the availability, accessi- three user types. Case studies will provide a concrete ba-
bility, and quality of reference material and support until sis for discussion and evaluation: we’ll include either ac-
the package is on our desktops, but these affect different tual examples of comparable work done with all packages
types of users in different ways. For example, undergradu- or reasonably realistic examples that illustrate the variety
ate instructors charged primarily with their students’ con- of uses we’ve outlined. To the extent possible, we will use
ceptual development can’t devote much time to teaching examples drawn from actual users’ work. At very least,
them how to use tools. Research scientists’ and developers’ we’ll seek out actual users to critique any illustrative ex-
time is expensive, so technical support of productivity soft- amples we create.
ware is key to its cost-effectiveness. Most people producing In analyzing and generalizing the case-study results, we’ll
publications work under deadlines, which means a publica- try to consistently address a range of important questions,
tion’s value might depend on its timeliness. This implies a such as:
cost–benefit computation of a different sort, but again, the
accessibility and quality of product support and reference • What is the price of going with a single integrated pack-
materials have an impact. age rather than adopting a piecemeal approach?
• What differences in the packages’ historical genesis and
development might indicate future evolution patterns?
• To what extent are the packages equivalent?
• Are there significant differences between versions of
Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab for the Macintosh,
Windows, and Linux platforms?
• Are their differences in the distribution of uses according
to discipline or workplace?

Is it possible to construct cost–benefit analyses of these

three products that are of use to the several types of users?
We’ll find out if we hear from you, so keep those cards and
letters coming.

Norman Chonacky is a research fellow in the Center for United Na-

tions Studies in the Political Science Department at Yale University. His
research interests include cognitive processes in research and educa-
tion, environmental sensors and the management of data derived from
sensor arrays, the physico-chemical behavior of material in environ-
mental systems, and applied optics. Chonacky received a PhD in
physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is a member of
the IEEE Computer Society, the American Association of Physics Teach-
ers (AAPT), American Physical Society (APS), and American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Contact him at norman.
[email protected].

David Winch is emeritus professor of physics at Kalamazoo College. His

research interests are focused on educational technologies. Winch re-
ceived a PhD in physics from Clarkson University. He is coauthor of
Physics: Cinema Classics (ZTEK, videodisc/CD 1993, DVD/CD 2004). Con-
tact him at [email protected].

16 COMPUTING IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING