Analysis of nntp traffic for Matlab, Maple, Mathematica, Sage and Scilab newsgroups
Nasser M. Abbasi
traffic trends over the years for the above groups.
http://12000.org/my_notes/maple_mma_matlab_trends/CAS_trends.html
Hope you find it interesting.
--Nasser
Dave
Nasser,
your first graph, which has the data for all these tools, shows the number of
recent posts:
MATLAB >> Sage > Mathematica >> Scilab > Maple
However, the fact Sage appears more popular than Mathematica is because you
display both the developer and support mailing lists for Sage, whereas you only
show the support requests for MATLAB, Mathematica and Maple. (You obviously
can't display the numbers of internal communications between the developers of
the commercial products Mathematica, Maple or MATLAB).
Sage has two lists - one for support requests, one for communication between the
developers. To make the playing field more level, you should remove
sage-developer posts.
If you only consider the support requests for Sage, then the recent postings
will certainly show
MATLAB > Mathematica > Sage > Scilab > Maple
(Sage will still beat Scilab and Maple, even if you consider only the support
requests to Sage).
Either way, it appears both Wolfram Research and Maplesoft should be concerned
about the popularity of Sage, but perhaps Mathworks do not need to be.
I do not know if MATLAB and Maple have their own forums set up by Mathworks and
Maplesoft. If so, and those are well used, then perhaps Maplesoft do not need to
worry quite as much.
Clearly Wolfram Research do need to be concerned about the rise of Sage, since
even if you consider only Sage support requests, Sage is not that far behind
Mathematica, and the trend would suggest it will overtake Mathematica soon.
The fact that a search on 'sage math' in Google will bring up sponsored
advertisements for Mathematica, makes me think Wolfram Research have woken up to
this fact. The fact it does not for Maple, makes me believe Maplesoft might have
their heads in the sand!
Dave
--
I respectfully request that this message is not archived by companies as
unscrupulous as 'Experts Exchange' . In case you are unaware,
'Experts Exchange' take questions posted on the web and try to find
idiots stupid enough to pay for the answers, which were posted freely
by others. They are leeches.
Nasser Abbasi
> Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>> I used data from Google newsgroups to do some plots comparing newsgroup
>> traffic trends over the years for the above groups.
>>
>> http://12000.org/my_notes/maple_mma_matlab_trends/CAS_trends.html
>>
> To make the playing field more level, you should remove sage-developer
> posts.
>
Ok, I've updated the page. Now only sage-support is used where needed.
I've add a pie chart showing the average number of posts per month as
well. (to take the average, I averaged each sequence over the smallest
time period between all systems to make things more fair, as Matlab
has been around the longest).
>
> I do not know if MATLAB and Maple have their own forums set up by
> Mathworks and Maplesoft. If so, and those are well used, then perhaps
> Maplesoft do not need to worry quite as much.
>
Matlab does not have one. But Maple has Maple forum supported by
Maplesoft web site.
I only looked at public nntp newsgroup activity.
--Nasser