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Wow, is Matlab really that expensive? I didn't realize.

What about R? It is free and is supposedly almost identical to S-plus.

QuoteDo your server have mathematica? Do you know how to convert codes in Maple to codes in mathematica? I have no clue, and the "real" quants in my office laugh at me when I ask them such questions. i use Matlab at home for my (unpublished, crappy) research. My limited experience with Mathmatica was "why doesn't this work like MatLab? I think I'll go get a beer rather than figure it out." Sorry, ask someone smarter than me. good luck.

QuoteWow, is Matlab really that expensive? I didn't realize. Could be worse. It could be that expensive AND not work. We've seen plenty of that in our lifetimes.

James,What about the ability of generating stand alone c++ code from matlab? Is this efficient? Do you think one should better use matlab and generate c/c++ code rather than programming in his corner.I was always attracted by this feature of matlab (idleness) but did never take the step toward it ."A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."(Paul Erdös)

Lazy,don't bother going down that route. you need a lot of C knowledge and the whole process is a massive hassle.if you are using C you are probably looking for portability, speed and stability. the converted matlab code doesn'treally have this.maybe with more experience you will learn to deal with it but you may as well just bite the bullet and do all of it in C.

James said,"Picking a signal of say, somebody selling regularly in identical lots of 125 of a security at regular time intervals is a cakewalk compared to that."How 'bout somebody or someTHING?Or are you one of these asses who sticks his head in the sand, insisting that there is no participation by extraterrestrials in US capital markets??Think again, my friend. The extraterrestrials have a labor-retirement cycle of .11 seconds, in Earth years, they engage in wormhole arbitrage with their great-great-great-grandchildren^24, and their population declines by 99.999996% every .4 milliseconds.But they just started voting Republican.So stick that in your economic pipe and smoke it*MP*Some will argue this is impossible, since there is no commerce arbitraging US currency against extraterrestrials. In reality, the potential arbitrage, discounting a single neutron which they calculate "could" pass through a lone, microscopic wormhole 4 billion years from now, provides all the fair-value island they need to build up their discounted air-castle.

Matlab, Maple, Mathematica...each has extensive capabilities & "libraries". I think it's inappropriate to compare them with Excel. For someone familiar with any of the former, it would be almost next to impossible to beat them in implementation time using Excel or C++. I recently opted for Mathematica. Had used Maple before, and Macsyma before that. It gets tiring switching between these packages. I sensed that Mathematica is leading the pack and opted for it. Mathematica: is your numerical scheme unstable, afflicted by round-off? Flick a switch go to a 20 decimal precision run the script. Nah, the results are still the same. Must be my algorithm. Done.

lazy,i still use CodeWarrior for the (crappy, laughably simple) stand alone C++ utilities that I cobble together. I dunno what the copter beanies in the office do. filthy sounds like he knows from (painful) experience not to program and use MatLab and then convert the code to C++ for such purposes.MP, I will private message Omar and ask him to explain your posting to me in terms I can understand.But I do try to get my students to understand that the minimum variance portfolio includes all assets...including your Republican-voting-wormhole-using-time-displaced-proton.Wonder what the protons in my body are worth in present value terms discounted for the expected return for the 't' between me and my (hopefully fruitful) descendents?.....Descendants who probably will be battling it out with Teegach's minions (hope it doesn't look like Battlefiiled Earth!). Better get "clear" so I can be an OT (Operating Thetan) and ensure their prosperity. Where's my e-meter?