6 ms·

Mathematica home edition, finally. $300.

65 points by herdrick 18y ago

glomek 18y ago
I dumped Mathematica many, many years ago when they turned evil and started making it stop working after a month if you haven't registered it.
- gaius 18y ago
  What did you switch to?
msie 18y ago
I was trying to avoid reading Hacker News more than once a day but I was glad I saw this on my second visit! :)
FlorinAndrei 18y ago
"We are sorry, but this item is not currently available for your region." My region is Northern California. Hmmm...
- icey 18y ago
  Are you proxied?
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
babul 18y ago
On a side note, the scrapbook of the company history is very interesting (a startup story beginning >20 years ago with one guy)... http://www.wolfram.com/company/scrapbook/page02.html#1988_StoryGetsOut http://www.wolfram.com/company/scrapbook/page02.html#1988_St...
gaius 18y ago
Not in the UK tho, WTF!? I have been badgering Wolfram about this for years!
- demallien 18y ago
  Yeah, I was really pleased when I saw the headline, and then - only for the US/Canadian market. :-( I'm guessing it has something to do with being able to identify whether a credit card is linked to a person or an organisation. Does anyone know the details of how that works?
  - gaius 18y ago
    Wolfram do have a UK presence tho', I've spoken to people in their office here (and have just emailed them about this). So there's no reason they couldn't do whatever checks they do here too. I'm using Sage at home at the moment which is fairly impressive in its own right, but it's not the same. Check it out: http://www.sagemath.org/ http://www.sagemath.org/
  - gaius 18y ago
    Actually, if you could email info@wolfram.co.uk about this maybe we could convince them there's sufficient demand for it.
kcy 18y ago
Can you do all the image/signal processing stuff with the home edition? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=382986 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=382986
- designtofly 18y ago
  The answer is right there on the linked page. Q: How is Mathematica Home Edition different from the professional version of Mathematica? Mathematica Home Edition is a fully functional version of Mathematica Professional with the same features.
  - nx 18y ago
    I'm sorry, I'm probably missing the point. Why is it the same product with the same features but with a different name?
    - mhartl 18y ago
      Why is it the same product with the same features but with a different name? Price discrimination* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination) is profitable if you can pull it off. *Don't let the scary name put you off; everyone price discriminates if they can. The best price discriminators in the world are American universities.
    - tokenadult 18y ago
      It's released to a specialized submarket of all Mathematica users (namely those who are paying out of pocket and who want to save money). That's called price discrimination, and it also exists among the submarkets of students shopping for colleges to attend. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/12/moving-toward-perfect-price.html http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/12/moving-toward-perfect...
    - likpok 18y ago
      The problem with Mathematica for serious development is that you need Mathematica to run the stuff. So if you write a gadget/utility, only people with Mathematica can run it. This is an attempt to get deeper penetration into the hobbyist market.
tocomment 18y ago
Can someone please make a joke about a new kind of science or how celluar automata solves every problem in every field? (I couldn't think of any) But seriously, what can I do with mathematica? Should I buy this?
- likpok 18y ago
  Mathematica is a very powerful Lisp-based programming language(without user-visible s-expressions). It is (to an extent) designed for numerical/symbolic math; there are a lot of libraries available for that. However, they've added a lot of other libraries, for things like image processing, etc. It is a very powerful system, however somewhat limited by poor market penetration (nothing else uses it, so only people with Mathematica could use it).
  - gaius 18y ago
    There's a free Mathematica player that lets you run but not edit.
  - pfedor 18y ago
    A friend of mine who's a physicist claims that he's so used to Mathematica that he uses it for everyday scripting tasks, the way other people use Tcl or Perl.
    - ph0rque 18y ago
      I came across a web page made in mathematica once...
      - cturner 18y ago
        Yeah - I met a chap at an openbase conference in 2005 that was using it for professional web-application development. I've been intrigued by the idea ever since. I'd be interested to hear more stories from people who really leverage it like this.
        18y ago
tokenadult 18y ago
Doesn't the Mathematica for the Classroom version have additional notebooks that produce classroom handouts conveniently? I see that it has an even lower price for eligible teachers.
llimllib 18y ago
sweet! Now I need a project so I can put my money where my mouth is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369109 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369109
- henning 18y ago
  I'm enjoying working through http://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-Evolutionary-Computation-Mathematica-Intelligence/dp/1558606378 http://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-Evolutionary-Computation-... .
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
biohacker42 18y ago
I own a very old student version of Mathematica, not that I can use it, since transferring it to a new machine was beyond my technical abilities, thanks to their copy protection. At $300 I would buy it, even though I have no specific need, it is a great application. But I'd hate to spend $300 and only be able to install it exactly once.
globalrev 18y ago
how is Mathematica compared to Matlab? As I understand Mathematica is for all kinds of math while Matlab is basically only matrix and linear algebra-stuff(with a lot of libraries for applications of that). Is Mathematica as good as Matlab for linear algebra?
- hs 18y ago
  for plotting, matlab is a bit 'lower level' where you map a function over a range and then plot the list of return values for linear algebra, matlab is more succinct, it has "'" transpose and "^-1" for inverse, so you can type x = A'(AA')^-1*b
  - mhartl 18y ago
    You can do that in Mathematica, too: http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/functions/Transpose http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/functions/Transpose Mathematica has an extensive set of typesetting shortcuts. You just need to know where to look.
- mhartl 18y ago
  I used Mathematica extensively for my physics Ph.D. at Caltech (the same degree and school as Stephen Wolfram---though he finished in two years at the age of 20, instead of six at 29...) I've only used MATLAB sparingly, so I'm can't offer much of a comparison, but Mathematica is excellent at linear algebra: http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/MatricesAndLinearAlgebra.html http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/MatricesAndLi...
- maximilian 18y ago
  Matlab is good at prototyping what one might actually build in another language. Its basically a regular python like language that has lots of built-ins for doing stuff with vectors and matrices and plotting things nicely. Mathematica on the other hand is more of a tool for doing things symbolically (x's & y's). You can integrate, differentiate, find roots, etc all symbolically. It does have tools for doing numerical integrations and such, but they are much more of a black box than matlab's and are very hard to port out of mathematica. Some math folks don't like mathematica because of its black-box attitude, which is understandable. I use it sometimes for calculus. Don't do linear algebra with mathematica. Matlab is waaay better at it.
colgur 18y ago
Great price compared to the Pro edition. How does Mathematica compare with R for statistics?

65 points by herdrick 18y ago

I dumped Mathematica many, many years ago when they turned evil and started making it stop working after a month if you haven't registered it.

gaius 18y ago
What did you switch to?

msie 18y ago

I was trying to avoid reading Hacker News more than once a day but I was glad I saw this on my second visit! :)

FlorinAndrei 18y ago

"We are sorry, but this item is not currently available for your region." My region is Northern California. Hmmm...

icey 18y ago
Are you proxied?

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

babul 18y ago

On a side note, the scrapbook of the company history is very interesting (a startup story beginning >20 years ago with one guy)... http://www.wolfram.com/company/scrapbook/page02.html#1988_StoryGetsOut http://www.wolfram.com/company/scrapbook/page02.html#1988_St...

gaius 18y ago

Not in the UK tho, WTF!? I have been badgering Wolfram about this for years!

demallien 18y ago
Yeah, I was really pleased when I saw the headline, and then - only for the US/Canadian market. :-( I'm guessing it has something to do with being able to identify whether a credit card is linked to a person or an organisation. Does anyone know the details of how that works?
- gaius 18y ago
  Wolfram do have a UK presence tho', I've spoken to people in their office here (and have just emailed them about this). So there's no reason they couldn't do whatever checks they do here too. I'm using Sage at home at the moment which is fairly impressive in its own right, but it's not the same. Check it out: http://www.sagemath.org/ http://www.sagemath.org/
- gaius 18y ago
  Actually, if you could email info@wolfram.co.uk about this maybe we could convince them there's sufficient demand for it.

kcy 18y ago

Can you do all the image/signal processing stuff with the home edition? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=382986 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=382986

designtofly 18y ago
The answer is right there on the linked page. Q: How is Mathematica Home Edition different from the professional version of Mathematica? Mathematica Home Edition is a fully functional version of Mathematica Professional with the same features.
- nx 18y ago
  I'm sorry, I'm probably missing the point. Why is it the same product with the same features but with a different name?
  - mhartl 18y ago
    Why is it the same product with the same features but with a different name? Price discrimination* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination) is profitable if you can pull it off. *Don't let the scary name put you off; everyone price discriminates if they can. The best price discriminators in the world are American universities.
  - tokenadult 18y ago
    It's released to a specialized submarket of all Mathematica users (namely those who are paying out of pocket and who want to save money). That's called price discrimination, and it also exists among the submarkets of students shopping for colleges to attend. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/12/moving-toward-perfect-price.html http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/12/moving-toward-perfect...
  - likpok 18y ago
    The problem with Mathematica for serious development is that you need Mathematica to run the stuff. So if you write a gadget/utility, only people with Mathematica can run it. This is an attempt to get deeper penetration into the hobbyist market.

tocomment 18y ago

Can someone please make a joke about a new kind of science or how celluar automata solves every problem in every field? (I couldn't think of any) But seriously, what can I do with mathematica? Should I buy this?

likpok 18y ago
Mathematica is a very powerful Lisp-based programming language(without user-visible s-expressions). It is (to an extent) designed for numerical/symbolic math; there are a lot of libraries available for that. However, they've added a lot of other libraries, for things like image processing, etc. It is a very powerful system, however somewhat limited by poor market penetration (nothing else uses it, so only people with Mathematica could use it).
- gaius 18y ago
  There's a free Mathematica player that lets you run but not edit.
- pfedor 18y ago
  A friend of mine who's a physicist claims that he's so used to Mathematica that he uses it for everyday scripting tasks, the way other people use Tcl or Perl.
  - ph0rque 18y ago
    I came across a web page made in mathematica once...
    - cturner 18y ago
      Yeah - I met a chap at an openbase conference in 2005 that was using it for professional web-application development. I've been intrigued by the idea ever since. I'd be interested to hear more stories from people who really leverage it like this.
      - 18y ago

tokenadult 18y ago

Doesn't the Mathematica for the Classroom version have additional notebooks that produce classroom handouts conveniently? I see that it has an even lower price for eligible teachers.

llimllib 18y ago

sweet! Now I need a project so I can put my money where my mouth is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369109 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369109

henning 18y ago
I'm enjoying working through http://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-Evolutionary-Computation-Mathematica-Intelligence/dp/1558606378 http://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-Evolutionary-Computation-... .

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

biohacker42 18y ago

I own a very old student version of Mathematica, not that I can use it, since transferring it to a new machine was beyond my technical abilities, thanks to their copy protection. At $300 I would buy it, even though I have no specific need, it is a great application. But I'd hate to spend $300 and only be able to install it exactly once.

globalrev 18y ago

how is Mathematica compared to Matlab? As I understand Mathematica is for all kinds of math while Matlab is basically only matrix and linear algebra-stuff(with a lot of libraries for applications of that). Is Mathematica as good as Matlab for linear algebra?

hs 18y ago
for plotting, matlab is a bit 'lower level' where you map a function over a range and then plot the list of return values for linear algebra, matlab is more succinct, it has "'" transpose and "^-1" for inverse, so you can type x = A'(AA')^-1*b
- mhartl 18y ago
  You can do that in Mathematica, too: http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/functions/Transpose http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/functions/Transpose Mathematica has an extensive set of typesetting shortcuts. You just need to know where to look.
mhartl 18y ago
I used Mathematica extensively for my physics Ph.D. at Caltech (the same degree and school as Stephen Wolfram---though he finished in two years at the age of 20, instead of six at 29...) I've only used MATLAB sparingly, so I'm can't offer much of a comparison, but Mathematica is excellent at linear algebra: http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/MatricesAndLinearAlgebra.html http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/MatricesAndLi...
maximilian 18y ago
Matlab is good at prototyping what one might actually build in another language. Its basically a regular python like language that has lots of built-ins for doing stuff with vectors and matrices and plotting things nicely. Mathematica on the other hand is more of a tool for doing things symbolically (x's & y's). You can integrate, differentiate, find roots, etc all symbolically. It does have tools for doing numerical integrations and such, but they are much more of a black box than matlab's and are very hard to port out of mathematica. Some math folks don't like mathematica because of its black-box attitude, which is understandable. I use it sometimes for calculus. Don't do linear algebra with mathematica. Matlab is waaay better at it.

colgur 18y ago

Great price compared to the Pro edition. How does Mathematica compare with R for statistics?