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Octave is free and I used MATLAB in school so it made sense to install it. I've never had problems with Octave though I've heard others complain about it. I don't use it that much. For graphics I always use R.

Maybe I should have mentioned Coq in my previous list. I installed it a few days ago. Haven't learned to use it yet.

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Octave does not have a pre-packaged optimization routine or a usable toolbox of which I am aware, and I find GnuPlot abysmal (but this is likely due to my lack of experience with it).

These are probably easily corrected. But solutions already exist within the FLOSS community with other packages such as Sage (and, of course, Numpy and the rest)--reinventing the wheel is something few have time for! :-) This is a big reason I like Sage: it is designed like the Borg in that it uses bindings to connect into other software (both proprietary and open source).

Yes! Star Trek reference and SageMath in the same sentence. It is a good night.

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