Is SciPy killing the Wolfram star?

[KF6GPE]

Luigi,
Nice to meet a fellow ham!

I actually debated Mathematica on the Pi --- I don't have a Pi, and it would be an excuse to set one up. But clearing my desk so I'd have a place to plug it into the one HDMI monitor we have seemed like more time and work (yes, my office is that much of a disaster) than sending the Maplesoft folks a couple of hundred dollars. (My wife would likely disagree... ) I may still do that.

I chose Maple primarily for nostalgia, secondarily for the hopes I'd remember it better because I used it more, and finally because although dated I have a stack of books on using it I can refer to.

You make a great point about the lack of seasonal spikes in SciPy. That's really interesting --- I hadn't noticed that. Of course you're right, Mathematica would show clear trends there.

A couple of astronomers I know also rave about SciPy and NumPy in their work --- it wouldn't occur to them to even use a paid solution at this point. The costs don't outweigh the benefits, and they use Python for a lot of the rest of their computing and pipeline construction. That may be typical in other professions as well.

Paul, that's a good observation about Alpha. I should really play with it more. Another advantage to Alpha is that it's server side --- you don't need anything special to ask it questions on Android, iOS, or Chrome. Good for students and may well become the next "pocket calculator" for serious math stuff on our cell phones, what with ubiquitous[/i] WiFi and cell coverage at most of the places we do math.