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Plotting Packages
(Origin, SigmaPlot, Kaleidagraph, Igor, DADiSP, Gnuplot, ...)
Mathematica is by almost any measure the world's most sophisticated "plotting package." By integrating plotting into the complete Mathematica system, Mathematica is able to provide both a much richer environment for handling data, and a much higher level of flexibility and automation for plotting itself.
While there are many packages that can produce basic 2D and 3D plots, Mathematica's depth of computational algorithms makes possible a whole other level of static and dynamic visualization. And with Wolfram Research's unique collaboration between award-winning graphic design and technical development, Mathematica makes it easy for you to communicate your data and results in the most compelling and up-to-date way.
While traditional plotting packages concentrate on producing individual plots, Mathematica's unique document-centered interface allows you to keep a complete "lab notebook" that includes textual descriptions, original data, programs, formatted tables and any number of fully interactive graphics integrated into the document. With its powerful built-in language, Mathematica also makes it straightforward to automate the complete pipeline of importing data, performing arbitrary modeling and analysis, creating completely customized plots, and delivering to screen, print or web in all the latest static or dynamic formats.
Plotting Package Features Built into Mathematica:
- Full 2D data and function plotting >>
- Surface, contour, density, etc. plots »
- State-of-the-art 3D graphics »
- 3D contour and isosurface plotting »
- Library of specialized plot types »
- Interactive editing and annotation of plots »
- Built-in statistical analysis »
- Import from hundreds of standard and specialized data formats »
- Export in all standard on-screen, web and print graphics formats »
Key Advantages of Mathematica Compared to Plotting Packages:
- Full, rich, well-established, computational language and environment »
- Efficient support for arbitrarily large datasets
- Flexible data import from files, pipes and arbitrary URLs »
- Fully adaptive 2D and 3D function plotting, with automated singularity detection »
- Real-time rotation, zooming, etc. of 3D graphics
- Full lighting, coloring, transparency, etc. for 3D surfaces »
- Support for general irregularly spaced 2D and 3D data
- Automated region-of-interest detection
- Support for plotting of inequalities and arbitrary parametric regions »
- Support for surface meshes and contours specified by arbitrary functions »
- Built-in fully automated network visualization »
- Constrained nonlinear fitting of data to arbitrary functions »
- Computational aesthetics methodology for automatic styling of plots »
- Arbitrary tabular layout and insetting of 2D and 3D graphics »
- 2D and 3D graphics fully integrated into documents
- Drill-down features including tooltips containing arbitrary text and images »
- Support for arbitrary typeset labeling, including math, tables, etc.
- Support for instant creation of interactive interfaces for changing parameters, etc. »
- Animation of 2D and 3D plots with respect to any parameter »
- Symbolic representation of all graphics, allowing general programmatic manipulation »
- Capture and reuse manual editing and annotations
- Programmatically generate complete reports including interactive graphics
- Export to all standard graphics formats, including animations with Flash, etc. »
- Mechanism for displaying or hiding data and specifications leading up to a plot »
- Full integrated history management in notebook documents »
- Free Mathematica Player for deployment of interactive plots
- Continual development for the latest forms of information visualization
Interoperability with Plotting Packages:
- Import and export in all standard data formats, including CSV, TSV, HDF, ... »
- Import and export in standard spreadsheet formats »
- Graphics export in all standard bitmap and vector graphics formats »
Interesting Tidbits:
- Mathematica graphics regularly appear on the covers of top scientific journals
- The Wolfram Research website includes tens of thousands of Mathematica-generated plots
See Also Analyses On:
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