EXCEL VS. MATHEMATICA, STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESS?

[barb28]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone could comment on what
they perceive the difference of the programs
Excel and Mathematica?

I understand that in the United States, Excel is
regarded as the most common industry standard for
financial calculations, and that also the excellent
program "mathematica" is also an industry standard.

What are the differences? Does one program do more?
I am primarily speaking from a financial calculation
point of view, and not really a technical point of
view.

Also, in speaking of the industry standards, it does
not need be restricted to only these two programs.
Perhaps there are others, better, programs that could
be brought into the discussion?

Please reply in the forum, and thankyou for your input
in helping us decide the stregnths and weaknesses of
these two particular programs and how they fit into
todays modern understanding of financial calculations


Thankyou.

 

[Harlan Grove]

I was wondering if someone could comment on what
they perceive the difference of the programs
Excel and Mathematica?

....

They do different things. Strictly in terms of calculations, Mathematica can
do more, but perhaps not as easily until you learn its programming language
(in which all Mathematica expressions are written). Mathematica actually
does symbolic mathematics using transformation and reduction of expressions
written in its own language. It performs calculations as a byproduct and
offshoot.

Excel, on the other hand, is a spreadsheet. It's calculation capabilities
are neither as broad nor as deep as Mathematica's, but it's generally much
easier to learn and much easier and quicker to perform routine calculations.
It's also MUCH, MUCH easier to format output in Excel or any other
spreadsheet than it is in Mathematica, at least it you want partially
tabular reports.

For common financial calculations (loan amortization, bond returns,
discounted cashflows), Excel is more efficient. For valuation of complex
financial derivatives using other than lognormally distributed error terms,
Excel just can't handle it (or it'd take a considerable amount of work to
make it do so), so Mathematica would be the better choice.

Depending on *precisely* what you need to do, it's possible there's a MatLab
package that'd be more appropriate than either Excel or Mathematica.