FreeMat trickery
2011-Apr-20, Wednesday 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chebeI have recently, for the first time, been required to use MathLab in college. Liking as I do to work from home, and not needing the program for longer than a few weeks I really rather not have to buy it. Instead, I took a look at FreeMat. It looks a lot like MathLab, which is proving to be very helpful, but some of the functions are used slightly differently like;
And some are missing altogether. The missing features are mostly in the statistical/heavy maths end, which sadly is what I need. Like
So off I trotted to the repo, set the Sticky Revision field to 4148, and followed the comments down through the source until I found the singular cov.m file. I downloaded it from the Download link, and saved to /usr/share/FreeMat-4.0/toolbox/stat/, maintaining the path as seen in the repo structure. Then I simply restarted FreeMat, and voilà, a
There are also features that haven't been created yet, like the
I'm impressed by the activity in the FreeMat project and how it is being actively developed. I hope it gets where it's going. (I also don't want to start off a debate on what clone if any is 'better', variety is good in this blog.)
hold in MathLab, is hold on in FreeMat, and hold off when you don't want to hold the plot anymore.And some are missing altogether. The missing features are mostly in the statistical/heavy maths end, which sadly is what I need. Like
cov. Well, it won't be missing for long, it was added to the source a couple of weeks ago and will be out in versions greater than 4148 (I'm running the newest I could get, and that's 4.0.1.x). This recent fix is in response to an old issue, in which they very helpfully mentioned the revision number when closing.So off I trotted to the repo, set the Sticky Revision field to 4148, and followed the comments down through the source until I found the singular cov.m file. I downloaded it from the Download link, and saved to /usr/share/FreeMat-4.0/toolbox/stat/, maintaining the path as seen in the repo structure. Then I simply restarted FreeMat, and voilà, a
cov function :)There are also features that haven't been created yet, like the
stem plotting function. But take a look at the google group before you despair, that's where I found code for stem kindly provided by a member. Add it to a .m file in your current working directory and you'll be able to use it. Sadly, it gives me some errors and doesn't work in exactly the way I want. At least for my purposes I could get away with using plot.I'm impressed by the activity in the FreeMat project and how it is being actively developed. I hope it gets where it's going. (I also don't want to start off a debate on what clone if any is 'better', variety is good in this blog.)
