How useful is a symbolic calculation tool?

[accdd]

How often during your work do you use a symbolic calculation tool like Mathematica / Maple / SymPy? Is it worth learning(especially for a theoretical physicist)? Thank you.

 

[FactChecker]

When you need them, they are definitely worth the small amount of work to learn. I have only used them a few times on very long equations that would have driven me crazy trying to manipulate. Mathematica and Maple are easy to learn and use. I have never used Sympy and am not familiar with it.

 

[malawi_glenn]

I used mathematica and custom made packages for it on an almost daily basis for my PhD thesis

 

[Wrichik Basu]

How often during your work do you use a symbolic calculation tool like Mathematica / Maple / SymPy? Is it worth learning(especially for a theoretical physicist)? Thank you.

For symbolic calculations, I, personally, find that MATLAB is far better than SymPy. On the other hand, most scientists prefer Mathematica for symbolic calculations. If your work entails plenty of symbolic calculations, then probably Mathematica should be the preferred tool.

Note that I haven't used Mathematica, so take my words with a grain of salt. There are people here who have used it and will be able to give better advice. I have MATLAB and mostly use it for numerical work, but when needed, MATLAB's symbolic libraries have met my needs.

And it's definitely worth learning these tools.

 

[FactChecker]

A symbolic tool can be much better than spending hours on manipulation, then days checking your work, only to spot a mistake two weeks after sending it out. (Don't ask me how I know.)

 

[DaveE]

I use an ancient version of MathCad* for that, and OMG, I couldn't live without it for complex algebra, trig, and such. In my world of engineering, you have to check your work all by yourself, there's no answer key and being wrong is expensive in many different ways (mostly wasted time, which we don't have). Humans, especially me, I think, make mistakes. It's a simple way to check derivations.

*No, I'm not recommending it. But I know it and have it and it works well enough.

 

[FactChecker]

I use an ancient version of MathCad* for that, and OMG, I couldn't live without it for complex algebra, trig, and such. In my world of engineering, you have to check your work all by yourself, there's no answer key and being wrong is expensive in many different ways (mostly wasted time, which we don't have). Humans, especially me, I think, make mistakes. It's a simple way to check derivations.

*No, I'm not recommending it. But I know it and have it and it works well enough.

I used MathCad for a while long ago and loved it. It checked units for compatibility and allowed easy mixing of text with calculations. I miss it. I thought that it would lead the way to better math tools, but it was just ignored.

 

[DaveE]

I used MathCad for a while long ago and loved it. It checked units for compatibility and allowed easy mixing of text with calculations. I miss it. I thought that it would lead the way to better math tools, but it was just ignored.

You can still buy it. $700.

 

[FactChecker]

You can still buy it. $700.

Actually, I think I did long ago. I don't need it now. I just thought that some of its great features would become a trend. Instead, we regressed.

 

[Paul Colby]

Maxima is free and still works. For most simple algebra problems it does just fine.

 

[robphy]

In my experience, one learns to use the tools that are easily accessible. As a grad student, my school’s site license was for Maple… so I learned to use Maple. (For symbolic calculations, I am more comfortable with Maple than I am with Mathematica or Matlab.)

These days as a faculty member, I want to learn to use more freely available tools… so I can encourage students to use them. (If one needs something more specialized that’s only available in maple, mathematica, matlab, etc…. then move toward that afterwards.)

I use such tools on occasion… maybe twice a week for general tasks… more often if I am working on a specific problem.