Calculus in Ruby

Question

Basically the title says it all

What I mean is differentiation and integration stuff that a CAS would do? (like a Typical handheld CAS if not better)

Is it possible?

What Gem need to be installed?

Anyone had any experience?

Answer 1

There maybe be something useful in the links at a Ruby for Science page I found. Warning: in Japanese, but does link to a few promising looking Ruby modules...

I don't know if you have to do this in Ruby or not, but the Python community has some pretty strong science ties: things like NumPy and SciPy seem to be everyone's favorite in that community. Maybe this helps with your choices, maybe not, but it's additional information.

Answer 2

Here's random calculus code someone used for a class. This library seems like it will eventually be able to do derivatives. I keep track of some other math-related gems here.

Answer 3

Because you don't have a really specific practical question, here are a couple of links with code examples for calculus in Ruby. Hopefully you find something here that is useful for your purposes:

http://www.arachnoid.com/ruby/gravity/index.html

http://seal-7.blogspot.com/2009/03/limits-and-derivatives-and-ruby.html

Noah

Answer 4

Here are a few links from the ruby mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/25fca9b317246443#

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/200696#new

And you can of course go to www.gemcutter.org, type in 'math' and see which gems come out.