?User Friendliness of free mathware?

Hello - - -

I need to find and download one of the free numerical-analysis-
software, to solve blocks of non-linear algebraic equations.
None of the sites I've researched gives any idea of how
difficult or easy any of these systems are to actually use. I'm
hoping that some of you have experience with one or more of
these softwares and can help me out.

Ie: Once set up, are they straightforward to use or do I need to
have a genius programmer/hacker at my elbow to continually
stay my hand from hideous error and blowing up the program?!

I've studied some general articles on the net. Wikipedia has

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numerical_analysis_software

which is a list of lots of the mathware that are available, like
GNU Octave, Perl Data Language and FreeMat. Also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_numerical_analysis_software

gives a brief and, IMHO, inadequate comparison of some of
those mathware.

Thanks for your help.

Gene
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: ?User Friendliness of free mathware?
    ... I need to find and download one of the free numerical-analysis- ... to solve blocks of non-linear algebraic equations. ... have a genius programmer/hacker at my elbow to continually ... which is a list of lots of the mathware that are available, ...
    (comp.soft-sys.matlab)
  • ?User Friendliness of free mathware?
    ... I need to find and download one of the free numerical-analysis- ... to solve blocks of non-linear algebraic equations. ... have a genius programmer/hacker at my elbow to continually ... which is a list of lots of the mathware that are available, ...
    (sci.math.num-analysis)
  • Re: ?User Friendliness of free mathware?
    ... to solve blocks of non-linear algebraic equations. ... have a genius programmer/hacker at my elbow to continually ... stay my hand from hideous error and blowing up the program?! ... GNU Octave, ...
    (sci.math.num-analysis)