Plotting

Plotting describes the graphical presentation of numerical data, or of mathematical functions. Several applications are available under Linux for plotting and more sophisticated functionality.

• Grace is a Motif-based application used for 2D plotting. Excellent curve fitting and analysis features can be run from a GUI or from scripts. Grace homepage

• Gnuplot (not related to GNU) is similar, but has a more limited GUI & is usually used from the command line. It has 2D and 3D capabilities and can graph analytic functions as well as numerical data. Fitting and splining (smoothing) are also built in. Gnuplot Central

Commercial software

• Mathematica and Maple are commercial computer algebra systems that perform plotting and other algebraic functions.

• Matlab and IDL are also excellent plotting packages with particular strength in numerical analysis, simulation and image processing.

All four of these packages are available on all major computing platforms. Mathematica, Matlab, and IDL (and Maple to a smaller extent) have expanded to become full-fledged programming languages on their own. They all have the advantage of portability in that code written on Linux systems runs on Windows or native Mac and vice-versa. Matlab (at least) began its life in Unix.

Professional licenses for these packages can run in the $1000 range. However, fully functional student versions are generally available for $100, while academic versions can be had for $300-500/seat.

Each of these programs is so extensive that it is important to go to the company web-pages for more detail.

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