NED@YMIR.BITNET (Ned Freed) (09/28/87)
In response to several requests I recently posted some information about
MATHLIB on the info-pmdf mailing list. This has generated a suprising amount of
mail, including mention of the fact that a couple of queries about MATHLIB had
appeared on info-vax a while back. Well, I must have missed them somehow. How
embarassing. Sorry about the LONG delay in responding to them. Anyhow, here is
some background information on the MATHLIB package:
Most people are familiar with the concept of a statistical analysis package.
There are lots of them available: SPSS, BMDP, Minitab, SAS, GLIM, Systat, TSP,
STP, and many others. The idea embodied by these packages is simple. They
provide "canned" statistical procedures for application to the user's data.
Such programs make it possible to perform very sophisticated analyses without
actually doing any real programming; the user need only learn the commands
relevant to the type of analysis he or she wants to perform. This is MUCH
easier than trying to write a program to do the same thing, even if you happen
to have a subroutine library available that will do the actual analysis.
MATHLIB is a package similar in form to a statistics package, except that it
performs various types of mathematical modelling and analysis and not
statistical analysis.
MATHLIB can accomodate models expressed in many different ways, including
nonlinear equations, Fourier transforms, ordinary differential equations,
partial differential equations, integral equations, and difference equations.
Models are entered as mathematical expressions via an extremely user-friendly
interactive command interface which includes a convenient symbolic manipulation
facility. Models can be fit to data using nonlinear least squares fitting
techniques. Smoothing and interpolation capabilities are also provided.
MATHLIB easily handles complex models and large data sets. Facilities are
provided to store, retrieve, transform, analyze, and fit models to data.
A key component of MATHLIB is its ability to produce graphics output at any
time. MATHLIB can produce:
(1) Line plots and scattergrams, with or without error bars.
(2) Plain, grouped and stacked bar charts and histograms.
(3) Pie charts.
(4) Contour plots.
(5) Three dimensional surface plots.
(6) Vector (flow) field diagrams.
(7) User-defined plot procedures (using a built-in graphics language).
MATHLIB graphics output is device-independent. If your device is supported (and
over 150 graphics devices are currently supported), you can take advantage of
all the graphics capabilities of MATHLIB. Even if you do not have any supported
output devices, MATHLIB provides a rudimentary character graphics facility that
can be used on virtually any output device.
MATHLIB also provides various utilities useful for system performance
monitoring and management on VAX/VMS systems. In particular, MATHLIB can read
and analyze data output by the VMS MONITOR facility. MATHLIB is well-suited to
this task since analysis of system performance data is essentially mathematical
in nature, and presentation of such data is usually done best in a graphical
format.
MATHLIB also provides an extensive library of user-callable routines so
that users may develop modelling software of their own based on MATHLIB's
symbolic manipulation facilities.
MATHLIB is well documented. Complete online help is available along with a
comprehensive reference manual (1000 pages), a user's guide and a variety of
application notes describing specific uses of MATHLIB.
Ongoing support and maintenance for MATHLIB is available. A new version of
MATHLIB is released approximately every year. Maintenance patches and minor
revisions are released as they are needed.
MATHLIB is currently available for VAX systems running VMS. A version for
the Sun should be released within the next few months.
MATHLIB consists of approximately 80,000 lines of Pascal implementing the
driver programs, command parser, and symbolic manipulation facilities, 80,000
lines of FORTRAN implementing the numerical analysis routines, and about
100,000 lines of FORTRAN implementing the graphics facilities. Source is not
included in the regular distribution but is available by special arrangement
for development purposes.
If you want additional information about MATHLIB please send me mail and
include a snail mail address. I'll see that some literature gets sent your way.
Ned Freed (ned@ymir.bitnet)
MATHLIB Project
Department of Mathematics
Harvey Mudd College
Claremont, CA 91711
(714) 621-8006