From: (Tim Keitt)
Subject: re: Seeking Opinions on Mathcad
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 18:22:32 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM
Reply-To: tkeitt@algodones.unm.edu

In article <BxzC5L.Bqq@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> mfprf@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Paul R. Falzer) writes:
>I just received an offer from the company to purchase the Mathcad
>program for about $80 and would appreciate your assistance in
>deciding whether I should buy it at that price.  

That's interesting because MathSoft wants $99 for an upgrade 
from 3.0 to 3.1! I would press them a bit about their upgrade 
policy before you commit.

>
>My needs are for an equation editor that is more powerful and
>flexible than AmiPro's and for a statistical analysis tool that
>would give me the flexibility to write linear models and analyze
>data accordingly.  My first question is, how well would Mathcad
>meet my needs relative to other programs on themarket--especially
>in comparison with other stat packages such as SPSS?

MathCAD is not an equation editor. I don't think it will 
produce the output quality you want. My guess is that MathCAD 
can't touch SPSS for statistics (I have only used 3.0, not 
3.1). You can extend it however with add on packages from 
MathSoft (which tend to be overpriced as well). Also be aware 
that, at least in 3.0 there are some pretty severe limits on 
the size of arrays (about 8k numbers) which makes some Monte 
Carlo techniques imposible.

>
>Second, Mathcad seems to resemble an electronic chalkboard. 
>Besides its working with mathematical equations and models, what
>(if any) are its other capabilities?  For instance, does it have
>an drawing, charting, or graphing capabilities?  How effectively
>does it perform word processing and layout functions?

It does produce resonable plots, but I wouldn't rely on it for 
anything very sophisticated.

>
>Third, what else should I know about the program's overall and
>specific strengths and weaknesses?  I am wondering about the
>following items, among others: how fast is the program compared
>with other significant applications?  How well does it work with
>other programs?  How effectively does it function as an OLE
>server?  What's its memory and system resource demands? 

The visual interface in version 3.0 is increadibly slow! You 
will often find the cursor 3-4 steps behind your key inputs, 
which makes editing a pain. I would try a demo of 3.1. The 
numerical part is reasonably fast. v3.0 doesn't support much in 
the way of interprocess communication (DDE, etc) but I haven't 
really explored this. It'll run fine on a 4MB windows box (you 
will *want* a math co-processor).

>
>Thanks in advance for your comments and opinions.
>
>  Paul R. Falzer
>    Internet: mfprf@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
>    Bitnet:   mfprf@ecnuxa.bitnet

Taken in parts MathCAD is pretty kludgy in version 3.0. This is 
true however of many first generation windows programs. Perhaps 
they've patched it up in 3.1. Taken as a whole however, its 
really a pretty slick program. For simple modelling and 
equation solving, it can be a lot faster than programming (if 
you've used it for a while). It doesn't support loops, which 
means you have to store results on an iteration in an array. 
This often isn't the most natural way to do things. But the 
visual clipboard metaphore is really nice sometimes. I guess I 
would say that the bottom line is that MathCAD is great for 
certain kinds of applications, but I find when the going gets 
tough, I use other tools (IMSL/IDL and C on our UNIX systems).

--
Timothy Keitt
tkeitt@algodones.unm.edu