Dear Clem, Try just about any good scientific graphing software: SURFER, etc. There is a range of names around, and I can't recall them. Some can be very expensive, but will produce unbelievable results. Contact a university bookshop and ask what they sell. Or try the ads in scientific journals such as "Geostatistics" and similar. They frequently carry ads for graphing software. Don't worry too much about mathematical software. Probably won't really help unless you want to do a fair amount of modification. Most retail software stores don't have a clue unless it is some noisy KILL, KILL, KILL game you want.
Or try a good statistics package: MINITAB (cheap, great stats power and good graphs) Avoid the really big stats packages (SPSS, etc). Too expensive, I use Minitab for graphs (x - y) with up to 4500 points. On my Pentium notebook, takes less than 10 seconds to plot. Wonderful to watch, pure magic. One down side. The graphs need some care to develop to get them to publication quality. I have spent several hours with it and can now produce what I want very quickly and easily. I have a scrap book full of the receipes of instructions to produce a certain result. It would be fairly easy to plot equations with Minitab. I have never had the need. They have a website with demos: probably something like www.minitab.com. I am not real sure. You can also get "academic" versions: full software, but about 1/2 price. Students and teachers should be able to get this discount. Final problem: all the "help" is on the CD. If you want paper help (i.e., a good old-fashioned book to actually look at while you are tearing your hair out, this is extra! My paper manuals cost $AUD90. The academic version of the software as $AUD200 if I remember rightly. But given our present exchange rate, I imagine the price may have risen in Australia by 50%). AVOID like the plague EXCEL. Despite what its rabid adherents claim, it is a financial accounting spreadsheet tarted up to compete with statistics packages. Plus, the graphics in it are the pits. Lowest of the lowest common denominator. (Yep, you astute observers out there are right, I don't like it! It has its uses, but like so much of Gates' stuff, it has become accepted as the norm. Yeah well, mediocrity is fine if you have never seen excellence! Having now insulted half the people in the world, I will retreat into my bunker and dodge the missiles (missives??) as they come showering back. Can I plead that sunny Alice Springs just had two consecutive cloudy days and I am feeling a bit sun-deprived??? No?? Oh well, it was worth a try! Bye, John PS: I am NOT a "rabid" Minitab supporter, I just like it! Dr John Pickard Senior Lecturer (Environmental Planning) Graduate School of the Environment Macquarie University NSW 2109 Australia Sabbatical leave July - December 1998. You can't contact me by phone or fax as I am on sabbatical leave in arid and semi-arid Australia. Please contact me via email or post material to the above address. It will be forwarded regularly.
