Free math graphing software
By Murray Bourne, 05 Oct 2010
I received a delightful mail from Morgan, a 95-year old reader. He said:
I'm interested in a 3D Contour Grapher. For personal use. I am 95.
I'm impressed with the number of retirees who maintain an interest in mathematics. The learners are the ones who will stay young.
Here are two recommendations, Morgan. The first is the easiest to use and most appropriate for you.
1. Winplot
Winplot by Richard Parris (deceased) of Philips Exeter Academy has been around for many years.
The good: Winplot can plot a large range of function types, including explicit and implicit functions, vector fields, parametric equations and 3-D plots, as well as contour plots as you can see below. It comes in many language versions.
The bad: Windows only (no Mac or Linux versions).
2. Graphics Layout Engine
Graphics Layout Engine is an open source offering, but not for the faint-hearted.
The good: It produces nice clean graphs and can handle a wide range of function types, including vector fields, split functions and statistics. It can also do 3-D plots, fractals and electronic circuit diagrams. GLE can output to PDF, EPS, PS, SVG (scalable vector graphics), PNG and JPEG (for the Web).
The bad: It is a scripted language. That is, you need to write your script in a text editor to get your graphs - there is no simple graphical user interface. You may also need to download other required software (like Ghostscipt, which is an interpreter for PostScript and PDF).
Earlier articles
I wrote an earlier article Graphs using free math software which you may find interesting.
Also, GeoGebra remains a favorite. I wrote an introductory review here: GeoGebra math software - a review, which contains relevant links.
GeoGebra doesn't do contour plots (as far as I can work out), but it is a great piece of free graphing software.
So Morgan, I hope you find all that useful.
See the 12 Comments below.
5 Oct 2010 at 10:59 pm [Comment permalink]
I'm surprised that neither of your free graph software posts mentions gnuplot, which is a powerful program that has been around for a long time.
6 Oct 2010 at 2:29 pm [Comment permalink]
And there are many more than gnuplot! This will be a continuing series of articles when I get time to play with them.
I'm currently evaluating some commercial products - report to come.
7 Oct 2010 at 5:23 pm [Comment permalink]
Thank you very much for this usefull programs.
11 Oct 2010 at 8:49 am [Comment permalink]
Hi! I use winplot and I have my multivariable calculus students use it also. One of them has a mac, and we were able to get it working on her mac with this: http://www.cotterphinney.com/winplot/
Sam
28 Oct 2010 at 11:29 pm [Comment permalink]
How about a nice graphing software package for the Mac OS 10.4 and above?
thanks!
29 Oct 2010 at 10:33 am [Comment permalink]
Hi Albert. GeoGebra will work on Mac (but not iPhone/iPad) since it is java-based.
UPDATE (Oct 2017: Geogebra is now more mobile friendly, however, file sizes are large and it takes overly long to load them.
4 Jan 2011 at 7:59 pm [Comment permalink]
Hello sir,
Can you also please write about similar software in ubuntu?
I can't find any good and simple graphing software for ubuntu.
4 Jan 2011 at 8:50 pm [Comment permalink]
I don't have much experience in Ubuntu OS.
Anyone out there able to help?
14 Aug 2017 at 6:49 am [Comment permalink]
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am wondering if your software can be used to easily plot simple 3D Vectors?
Thanks
Des Fox
14 Aug 2017 at 8:19 am [Comment permalink]
@Des: Probably GeoGebra is the best option for you. Here's an example of the kinds of things you can do: https://www.geogebra.org/m/mqGpuMUf
4 Oct 2017 at 10:28 am [Comment permalink]
Check out the Web based Graph Magic linked at selphp.com
4 Oct 2017 at 10:45 am [Comment permalink]
@Gary: Thanks for sharing!