Cheap Software/Tools for Plotting Cartesian Graphs

[Big-Daddy]

Does anyone know any cheap (preferably free) software or online tools for plotting reasonably complicated Cartesian graphs? I would like the functionality to 1) be able to select the range of x and y over which to view the graph, 2) be able to plot multiple functions on the same graph and 3) plot quite long functions of x and y (though they will not contain anything non-elementary). 2D only needed

 

[Filip Larsen]

Gnuplot [1] may fit your bill and has been around for a long time (I used it for my papers and thesis ages ago).

[1] http://www.gnuplot.info/

 

[Borek]

+1 for gnuplot.

 

[Big-Daddy]

Thanks for the recommendation. It seems to work for most things and there's loads of documentation but I haven't been able to get this online trial to plot my y-scale too? e.g. http://toycompute.net/?p=1 it's fine when I try code " plot x**2 " but, say, " plot x**2+y**2=6 " and it just plots y=x^2 again, rather than x^2+y^2=6. I couldn't find any example plots using full f(x,y) functions either. Any idea how to deal with this?

 

[DrewD]

desmos.com is pretty good as long as you have a good connection to the internet.

edit: If you are looking to make images to publish, this will not do.

 

[Martin Zhao]

Geogebra

You should go on google and search for Geogebra. It is free, but you need to have jave on your computer, so that you can use Geogebra smoothly.