Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

A good scientific software for function plotting?

M

MXM

macrumors member
Original poster
May 23, 2009
54
0
Hello,
Does anyone know if there's a good function plotting software (free or commercial), i.e. given a function, plot it graphically? I know I can plot the function using Excel, but I think I have to input a set of data first. I'm hoping to input the function and see the graphical representation directly. Thanks
 
Thanks! I was trying to plot functions involving LN (log), N(CDF for standard normal distribution) etc, it seems Grapher doesn't support it, or have I missed anything? thanks
 
MXM said:
Thanks! I was trying to plot functions involving LN (log), N(CDF for standard normal distribution) etc, it seems Grapher doesn't support it, or have I missed anything? thanks
Click to expand...
Notation is very important in mathematics. LN(x) is not a known function of x in closed-form. However, Grapher handles ln(x) beautifully. The CDF of the normal distribution is written as:

N(x) = (1+erf(x))/2​

where erf(x) is the error function of x. Grapher also handles this beautifully.
 
logger pro hands down. for professionals. works with vernier sensor technology. logger pro isn't cheap though; i'm talking at about $350 a license; however i get it via my school for free :p. if you can afford it or get a special deal, logger pro is the way to go.
 
Veldek said:
Might be overkill, if you just want to plot functions, but another good mathematics software is Maple.
Click to expand...
The OP's problem is not software. Grapher handles everything that he asked about and handles it well. The OP does not understand the mathematics.
 
Veldek said:
...

How do you know? Plotting standard normal distribution isn't something average Joe does every day.
Click to expand...
To the first of these two questions, it is my business to know. To the second, you are mistaken. The OP is not plotting the normal distribution. What he needs to do is to plot the CDF of the normal distribution. That is not something that the average Joe should ever do. Obviously, the OP is not an average Joe; he is a student taking a statistic course. However, he has not been paying attention in class. The CDF of the normal distribution is the error function, but he does not know that. Worse than this, he did not know how to properly write the natural logarithm function. There is simply no excuse for this. Many secondary school students and most university students are familiar with the natural logarithm function. It is a standard function on virtually every scientific calculator.
 
MisterMe said:
Worse than this, he did not know how to properly write the natural logarithm function. There is simply no excuse for this. Many secondary school students and most university students are familiar with the natural logarithm function. It is a standard function on virtually every scientific calculator.
Click to expand...

I don't think that he is unfamiliar with it, he just didn't know how to input it into Grapher. The formatting of the natural logarithm is hardly standardized across computer algebra and numerics programs anyways; in Excel "ln(number)" gets reformatted to "LN(number)." In Mathematica it is entered as "Log[x]." In Maple, "ln(x)" or "log(x)" works, while in MATLAB you need "Y = log(X)."

Maybe you're just having a bad day or something, MisterMe, and while I agree with you that asking how to plot the log function is a little simple minded, I don't think you've got any basis to say that the OP doesn't know anything about it.
 
miles01110 said:
I don't think that he is unfamiliar with it, he just didn't know how to input it into Grapher. The formatting of the natural logarithm is hardly standardized across computer algebra and numerics programs anyways; in Excel "ln(number)" gets reformatted to "LN(number)." In Mathematica it is entered as "Log[x]." In Maple, "ln(x)" or "log(x)" works, while in MATLAB you need "Y = log(X)."

Maybe you're just having a bad day or something, MisterMe, and while I agree with you that asking how to plot the log function is a little simple minded, I don't think you've got any basis to say that the OP doesn't know anything about it.
Click to expand...
You assume that the OP ever even heard tell of Mathematica, Maple, or MATLAB? Yeah, right. FWIW, instead of redirecting the OP to immeasurably more sophisticated apps, I showed him to graph the functions he wanted in the application that he was trying to use. Bad day, indeed.
 
I don't really see the point of needling the OP over syntax. ln is natural; log is base 10. With regards to graphing software, I've been a long time user of Kaleidagraph. You get very attractive graphs. Unfortunately, development appeared to stop prior to the Intel transition. The web page is dated 2007. It runs just fine on my MBP, but it'd be hard to recommend orphaned software.

Perhaps I'll check out Grapher. I'm not a big fan of the all-in-one programs such as MathCAD. For my work, I play around with the numbers in Excel and then shift to a graphing package.

BB
 
Data Plotting

Ok, just to make this thread longer:

Any suggestions for a good data plotting app for measurement data (possibly free)?

I just came across OmniGraphSketcher (which looks nice, but does is support box-plots with error-bars?)
How good is Excel 2008 for such a task?
 
Detektiv-Pinky said:
Ok, just to make this thread longer:

Any suggestions for a good data plotting app for measurement data (possibly free)?

I just came across OmniGraphSketcher (which looks nice, but does is support box-plots with error-bars?)
How good is Excel 2008 for such a task?
Click to expand...
KaleidaGraph is great. Despite implications to the contrary, it works just fine on Intel-based hardware. However, it is not free. DeltaGraph also does a beautiful job. It is a good analysis tool, but it targeted more toward display charts. However, I prefer KaleidaGraph because it is slightly more straightforward.

The strengths of OmniGraphSketcher are probably lost on most people. Back in the days before personal computers, authors employed professional graphic artists to draw graphs for their professional papers and books. Hand-drawn graphs have an elegance that is difficult to match using charting apps like KaleidaGraph, DeltaGraph, Origin, and such like. OmniGraphSketcher brings the elegance and flexibility of hand-drawn graphs to the personal computer. Of course, OmniGraphSketcher can graph a set of data points.

As a charting application, Excel is a very blunt instrument. I have never seen a graph created using Excel that didn't look like a graph created using Excel. By that, I mean that they look like crap. However, because so many people use Excel to produce crappy-looking graphs, crappy-looking graphs produced using Excel are acceptable in many quarters.
 
MisterMe said:
KaleidaGraph is great. Despite implications to the contrary, it works just fine on Intel-based hardware. However, it is not free. DeltaGraph also does a beautiful job. It is a good analysis tool, but it targeted more toward display charts. However, I prefer KaleidaGraph because it is slightly more straightforward.

The strengths of OmniGraphSketcher are probably lost on most people. Back in the days before personal computers, authors employed professional graphic artists to draw graphs for their professional papers and books. Hand-drawn graphs have an elegance that is difficult to match using charting apps like KaleidaGraph, DeltaGraph, Origin, and such like. OmniGraphSketcher brings the elegance and flexibility of hand-drawn graphs to the personal computer. Of course, OmniGraphSketcher can graph a set of data points.

As a charting application, Excel is a very blunt instrument. I have never seen a graph created using Excel that didn't look like a graph created using Excel. By that, I mean that they look like crap. However, because so many people use Excel to produce crappy-looking graphs, crappy-looking graphs produced using Excel are acceptable in many quarters.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for these suggestions.

You know, I have done box-plots in Excel2003 on Windows. It can be done but requires preprocessing on your data and a lot of fiddling with the individual settings. The results did not look bad - however it was a pain to produce for different data sets. It seems Excel2008 has lost this functionality?!

Today I tried R and OmniGraphSketcher. OmniGraphSketcher is really nice but needs some more work to be useful for my current plotting needs. It looks excellent for bar and line-graphs.

However, I figured out how to plot my data in R. The basics are really simple. 2 commands: read.table() and boxplot() and I have a plot from a csv-file. Now I need to figure out how to make some decorations and export...
 
Grapher manual

All what you need is pages 53-54 of this Grapher Manual :
"Grapher" is an Applications Utility of Mac OS X 10.4 & 10.5, it is a very interesting graph plotter software and math equation editor, but Grapher's Help is a lot too brief and reveals only a small fraction of its possibilities . A more complete manual of 68 pages in French, illustrated with screen captures and starting with tutorials, is downloadable free on the following websites :
< http://macetprof.free.fr/MacEtProf/Grapher.html > " ManuelGrapher120808M&P.zip " & " 2D Examples.zip " & " 3D Examples.zip " ;
< http://freeware.avosmac.com/ > letter "G" > Grapher (le manuel) ;
< http://atlanticmac.free.fr/index.php?trucs=3&page=195 > " Le livre de Grapher " ;
< http://atlanticmac.free.fr/index.php?trucs=3&page=197 > Some other examples.

Attachments : a presentation of "Mode d'emploi de Grapher" and the contents of this manual (French language).

Sincerely, YB24
 

Attachments

  • GrapherManuelPrésentation.rtf.zip
    1.6 KB · Views: 52
  • GrapherManuelSommaire.pdf.zip
    54.6 KB · Views: 51
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back