To: Alan,
What "Math Package", if any do you use? And which one would you recommend, such as "Mathematica" or "Maple".....etc. I appreciate it. Thanks.
+33661 These days I tend to use Mathcad mostly, sometimes Matlab and, very occasionally, Maple (though when I was working I used Matlab most).
Difficult to know what to recommend without knowing what you are going to use it for. The simplest to learn is probably Mathcad, the hardest is Maple (which is very similar to Mathematica). The most powerful, at least as far as mathematics is concerned, is Maple/Mathematica. Matlab and Mathcad are probably better for engineering applications. For secondary school mathematics all of them are more than capable. They are all pricey!
There are open-source (i.e. free) packages that do a lot of what these commercial packages do (though usually not so slickly). For example, there is Scilab (a Matlab lookalike); SMath Studio (a Mathcad lookalike); and others. There are a number of calculators that are mathematically quite powerful also, such as the Texas Instruments TI-Nspire or some of the Casio calculators. There is also Microsoft Mathematics 4 if you use a Microsoft Windows PC.
As I said, it depends what you intend to use it for!
