Author Topic: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?  (Read 6364 times)

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Offline 3ncrypt10n

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What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« on: January 06, 2016, 04:09:36 am »
I have recently felt the need to massively increase my general skill set in mathematical topics and I thought that a fun way to do this would be by using Programming languages for such Mathematical topics. So my question does not ask bluntly which individual programming languages would be "best", but, I'm only asking for what would apply well and what could make complexity in calculations remotely simple without the need for many additions to internal structures of the programming language and copious addons. Even blunt and short answers would be appreciated,  but I would find that they would lead to little to no help for me or potentially for others.

Thank you, and I appreciate any time one takes to read this.
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Q1: Do I have any recommendations for programming languages?
« Last Edit: January 06, 2016, 04:12:40 am by 3ncrypt10n »

Offline Scient1st

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2016, 04:47:29 am »
Look up Matlab.. or Mathematica. Both really good for Maths. The first has a gigantic set of tools that will let you do just about anything with little code and the language is quite simple and powerfull.


Offline Xorsion

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2016, 11:00:52 am »
  As an extension to Scient1st's post: Octave and SAGE are also frequently used, although one can claim they're not as advanced as their paid counterparts.
One could also argue that we're not strictly talking about programming languages, since all of these are essentially whole frameworks.
  Onto a more minimalistic scale: I *suppose* Python and Haskell can be useful to you, especially since you'd rather not bother with intricacies and gotchas and you just want to focus on the math at hand.
Assuming you are masochistic enough to want to bother with language intricacies, you could try coding some math functions in C/C++. I've also been told that ASM can be a very interesting game, though I personally strongly doubt the actual deployability and usefulness of math code written in ASM. Yet again, in any case, it's definitely a challenge, I guess.
  As personal advice on your question: As much as dull this may sound... pen and paper.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2016, 11:02:17 am by Xorsion »

Offline overflow

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2016, 01:03:56 pm »
I feel like you could've gotten a better answer googling this but nonetheless it really depends, you can look at R language for data analysis and statistical data models, Haskell is also growing in use among mathematicians, Matlab, etc...
"Personally, I make it a habit to avoid habits."

Offline IamMe

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2016, 05:17:53 pm »
I recommend two, mainstream lang would be python while the other would be matlab,
they both used for mathematical/statiscal/numerical/data analysis, most especially python

Offline evolut1o

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2016, 10:25:11 pm »
I feel like you could've gotten a better answer googling this but nonetheless it really depends, you can look at R language for data analysis and statistical data models, Haskell is also growing in use among mathematicians, Matlab, etc...

I think he made a question for the forum users opinions, don't flow with the shit of "go google" just because everyone else in the forum does. But like the google guy said, R is a good choice, it was made for statistical purposes.

-> http://www.tutorialspoint.com/
Good website to learn programming, there's a section of R in there, and online labs for you to practice.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2016, 10:32:21 pm by evolut1o »

Offline Jackal

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2016, 03:47:33 am »
NumPy, MatLab, R, Haskell, Clojure

Offline Jackal

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2016, 03:52:04 am »
NumPy and Sci Py well my engineering friends swear by it. Clojure and R a lot of data scientists use it so it's good for math.
Haskell because as the guys said it's used by mathemeticians and it's so fun to code in like I have been influenced by it tremendously all of my code is as purely functional as possible

Offline bolzano_1989

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Offline may1

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2016, 09:23:16 pm »
I'd second Matlab , it's the most powerful and flexible system for serious algorithm development. PM me if you need any help - I have 3 years academic experience.

Offline nohaxplz

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Re: What are the most useful programming languages for Maths?
« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2016, 09:26:14 am »
As others have said, Matlab is definitely the most powerful and probably the most used tool in the industry for mathematics in engineering/computing.

However, I'd also like to note that Functional programming languages are a HUGE bonus.

Scala and Haskell are some of the best due to the fact they can be used on Linux systems.
A fun bonus is F#, which is a very powerful .NET functional-programming language. (It's perfectly compatible with Mono, but I'd recommend programming on Windows using MS Visual Studio with "Xamarin Studio" and "Mono for Windows" 3rd Party extensions to develop cross platform applications straight from the MS Visual Studio IDE)

C# is a fun one, it's not a functional programming language (It's an OOP language), but it has a lot of functional programming features. C# is often compared and contrasted to F#, and most people that go to learn F# will find that authors of articles and books will treat F# as more of a conversion from C#.  Not everyone does this, but a good portion do.

C and C++ are used a lot in scientific industry simply due to the amount of power they provide. You should screw around with some stuff. While Matlab is awesome, I personally think you should try a functional programming language first.

I'm a Visual Studio and .NET guy.. So I'm going to vouch for C# and F# over most things, but like I said, Haskell and Scala are also very powerful (I'm more on Scala's side, Haskell is C++ while Scala is C#.. I personally think C# is the most well developed programming language ever; it's like Java, Python, and C++ all had a baby named Beyonce).

Everyone has their own opinion

Haskell does not run on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), but Scala does. Frege is basically a Haskell imitation that runs on the JVM though if you were interested in that.

Summary:

Pure math: Matlab
Functional Programming Language: Haskell
FP (Haskell imitator) on JVM: Frege
OOP/FP Hybrid on JVM: Scala
FP .NET Language: F#
OOP/FP Hybrid .NET Language: C#

Give those a shot. Functional programming is what is used a lot in Machine Learning, which is often very heavily tied into complex mathematical algorithms involving anything from basic statistics to chaos theory and advanced combinatorics.

(Disclaimer: I hate python, so if I left some Py languages out, that's why; sorry).
« Last Edit: January 26, 2016, 09:28:05 am by nohaxplz »