Graphing Software: What Do Most People Use?

[oksanav]

I know how to use Excel for accounting stuff, but it's a nightmare for graphs. Is there some shareware I could use? What do most people use?

 

[FrogPad]

I know how to use Excel for accounting stuff, but it's a nightmare for graphs. Is there some shareware I could use? What do most people use?

Excel is good for graphs. What problems are you having with it? What are you trying to do?

For a free math related program, check out:
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

 

[berkeman]

http://www.wolfram.com/products/student/mathforstudents/index.html

The student edition of Mathematic is pretty inexpensive (about $70/year), and if you'll be doing much in the way of computation, it's a good package to learn.

 

[oksanav]

Well, most of the problems are hit and miss, and I suppose I'll figure those out eventually. But one thing, is editing the font of one character of a title and not the whole title. Obviously subscripts are used a lot in lab reports, and I hate not being able to make one in the title. If this is what people really use, then I can learn it, but I wanted to make sure there wasn't something better. Thanks!

 

[drpizza]

Graphical Analysis (from Vernier) has my recommendation. I use it with my students for physics and physics labs. Quite a few students have gone on to request permission from other teachers to use it for lab reports rather than excel, because it's much more intuitive (and quicker) to use.

edit: it's not shareware, but the license is very reasonable (I believe a site license for our entire school is $70) There's a trial version if I recall correctly.

 

[chroot]

The best open-source plotting software on the planet is, without a doubt, gnuplot. I suggest downloading the Cygwin Unix-like environment for Windows, which includes gnuplot. Gnuplot will present a brief learning curve, but it's free and incredibly powerful.

I should also mention that Maxima uses gnuplot for its plotting work.

- Warren

 

[oksanav]

Thank you very much, I knew there had to be something better.