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Mathematica isn't being used at all? That's surprising. Mathematica is wonderful. I wonder what's holding it back? It doesn't seem to have a package manager. C

Mathematica isn't being used at all? That's surprising. Mathematica is wonderful. I wonder what's holding it back? It doesn't seem to have a package manager. Could it be that simple?

benbenolson 10y ago
Yes, it's extremely easy to link to packages in R, and even to include C++ programs to make your R package run faster. Mathematica, on the other hand, is a large proprietary package that involves a bit of effort to install and use. I'm not sure about what statistical features it has, but perhaps they're not as developed as R's.
hoka 10y ago
price?
detaro 10y ago
I'm not sure if Mathematica is on the radar if you are looking for "just" a stats package, it can do way more. I have no idea how it compares price-wise to SAS?
- oso2k 10y ago
  For a single licensed installation, over $7k per year for SAS. Every add-on/package increases price as well. What we're charged is inline with [0]. [0] https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SAS-cost https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SAS-cost
  - boomskats 10y ago
    Shameless self promotion, but not every package increases the price. We maintain a free (GPLv3) library for JS/SAS that lets you build nice user interfaces to your programs/workflows using modern frameworks like Angular or React. Check out github.com/boemska/h54s. I wouldn't normally post it like this, but SAS comes up so rarely that I figured if you're on HN and you use SAS, then you'll probably be interested. The more the merrier.
throwawaysocks 10y ago
The interfaces are terrible. The price is high. If you need to call one of the built-in pieces of Magic (TM) then Mathematica is OK, but if you want to build something new that needs to interface with literally anything outside of Mathematica, then Mathematica is a PITA.
- dekhn 10y ago
  Actually, the whole Mathematica kernal is exposed via a C API. I wrote a Python-Mathematica bridge based on this and it was wonderful. You could sit in Python, and send Python expressions with variables, etc, to Mathematica for evaluation, and get the results back as Python objects. The interface was trivial.
  - throwawaysocks 10y ago
    I've worked with these types of bridges before. They are terrible if you want to keep the program running and intermittently call Mathematica throughout the course of a multi-hour session. If you have a small script that makes a single one-off call to Mathematica, and the interface already exists for your language, which it probably doesn't, even if you're using an extremely popular language, and even though you're paying hundreds of dollars a year just for PERSONAL use, then things can be ok. But if you want to make a bunch of calls and keep the program running reliably then you're SOL. Oh, and don't even think about deploying. It will cost you so much that it's more cost-effective to just rewrite the thing or do the work of switching out with a different library/tool.
    - dekhn 10y ago
      I don't understand why you consider a problem to intermittently call mathematica's kernel in a multi-hour session. There's nothing that would make this not work. The mathematica C interface launches a copy of the kernel and communicates with it over a straightforward protocol. In this case, I wrote that interface and open sourced it. http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/MathSource/585/ http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/MathSource/585/
Fomite 10y ago
Mathematica is more well represented in mathematics, instead of statistics focused fields. Honestly, for stats stuff, mathematica isn't even on the radar.
micro_cam 10y ago
It's been about 10 years since I looked at mathematica but at that time it put the emphasis on symbolic manipulation of equations using its own internal magic while R (and matlab and numpy) focus on more traditional numerical computation, eg array operations via BLAS/LAPACK which is much more practical for statistics.

Mathematica isn't being used at all? That's surprising. Mathematica is wonderful. I wonder what's holding it back? It doesn't seem to have a package manager. Could it be that simple?

benbenolson 10y ago

Yes, it's extremely easy to link to packages in R, and even to include C++ programs to make your R package run faster. Mathematica, on the other hand, is a large proprietary package that involves a bit of effort to install and use. I'm not sure about what statistical features it has, but perhaps they're not as developed as R's.

hoka 10y ago

price?

detaro 10y ago

I'm not sure if Mathematica is on the radar if you are looking for "just" a stats package, it can do way more. I have no idea how it compares price-wise to SAS?

oso2k 10y ago
For a single licensed installation, over $7k per year for SAS. Every add-on/package increases price as well. What we're charged is inline with [0]. [0] https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SAS-cost https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SAS-cost
- boomskats 10y ago
  Shameless self promotion, but not every package increases the price. We maintain a free (GPLv3) library for JS/SAS that lets you build nice user interfaces to your programs/workflows using modern frameworks like Angular or React. Check out github.com/boemska/h54s. I wouldn't normally post it like this, but SAS comes up so rarely that I figured if you're on HN and you use SAS, then you'll probably be interested. The more the merrier.

throwawaysocks 10y ago

The interfaces are terrible. The price is high. If you need to call one of the built-in pieces of Magic (TM) then Mathematica is OK, but if you want to build something new that needs to interface with literally anything outside of Mathematica, then Mathematica is a PITA.

dekhn 10y ago
Actually, the whole Mathematica kernal is exposed via a C API. I wrote a Python-Mathematica bridge based on this and it was wonderful. You could sit in Python, and send Python expressions with variables, etc, to Mathematica for evaluation, and get the results back as Python objects. The interface was trivial.
- throwawaysocks 10y ago
  I've worked with these types of bridges before. They are terrible if you want to keep the program running and intermittently call Mathematica throughout the course of a multi-hour session. If you have a small script that makes a single one-off call to Mathematica, and the interface already exists for your language, which it probably doesn't, even if you're using an extremely popular language, and even though you're paying hundreds of dollars a year just for PERSONAL use, then things can be ok. But if you want to make a bunch of calls and keep the program running reliably then you're SOL. Oh, and don't even think about deploying. It will cost you so much that it's more cost-effective to just rewrite the thing or do the work of switching out with a different library/tool.
  - dekhn 10y ago
    I don't understand why you consider a problem to intermittently call mathematica's kernel in a multi-hour session. There's nothing that would make this not work. The mathematica C interface launches a copy of the kernel and communicates with it over a straightforward protocol. In this case, I wrote that interface and open sourced it. http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/MathSource/585/ http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/MathSource/585/

Fomite 10y ago

Mathematica is more well represented in mathematics, instead of statistics focused fields. Honestly, for stats stuff, mathematica isn't even on the radar.

micro_cam 10y ago

It's been about 10 years since I looked at mathematica but at that time it put the emphasis on symbolic manipulation of equations using its own internal magic while R (and matlab and numpy) focus on more traditional numerical computation, eg array operations via BLAS/LAPACK which is much more practical for statistics.