Grapher versus Graphing Calculator

[mmcirvin]

Many people have reported that Graphing Calculator is back in Tiger under the name of Grapher. Actually, Apple's Grapher isn't the same program; it's adapted from one of Graphing Calculator's competitors. The original is available for OS X now as a commercial program, and there's a free light version as well.

Grapher seems extremely powerful as an animated grapher, maybe even more powerful than the full Graphing Calculator. But what it's missing is the calculator feature. The original Graphing Calc was useful even as a simple expression evaluator; I would and sometimes still do bring it up just to calculate something. Typing in a complex expression algebraically was often more convenient than banging it into either a regular or RPN calculator. It could also do a few extremely simple symbolic algebra tasks (such as shifting quantities from one side of an equation to the other), though I never found that very useful.

Grapher also isn't as intuitive. Graphing Calc's user interface was so simple you didn't need any instructions; you just typed the equation you wanted and the thing would figure out what to do with it. You never had to plan in advance what kind of graph you wanted or whether you wanted one at all. Grapher actually makes you switch between modes to do different kinds of graphs.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...I see that Grapher actually can just evaluate the expression at a given point. But it's a feature you have to dig for, not something that happens almost automatically.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Not surprising that the UI of Graphing Calculator is better. They worked really hard with users/focus groups to hone the interface, and one of the creators famously admitted that software engineers should not do UI, because he was so appalled at his own UI when he realized how hard it was for the users. So in the end they came out with a very user-friendly interface.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I've never used Graphing Calculator, but I was mighty impressed when I could just type "x^2+y^2+z^2=4" in Grapher and it'd draw a ball, JUST LIKE THAT. Most little graphing programs I've used wouldn't have a clue what to do with an implicit equation, at least not without a lot of hand-holding.

And as a programmer, I find it even more impressive that they manage to figure out what kind of rendering algorithm to use on the fly like that.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Graphing Calc can handle that but only if you pony up for the pay version, which I haven't (actually I did once, but it was a long time ago and in Classic form).

I suspect Grapher is more powerful mathematically, though, judging from the support for things like differential equations.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just spent a whole lot of time unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to make Grapher graph an equation in spherical coordinates (without just incorporating the transform to Cartesian or cylindrical). Any ideas how to do that?

The prefs seem to indicate that the polar angle is called lower-case-phi, but that doesn't seem to work.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Huh, you know, I think this is a flat-out bug. I tried using the template for a spherical parametric surface, and that didn't work. Then I tried the one for a cylindrical parametric surface, and it didn't work until I changed the phi to a theta. I think somebody's confused over whether the azimuthal angle should be called phi or theta, and it's futzing up all the 3D cylindrical and spherical coordinates.

[(Anonymous)]

Finally someone who has noticed this bug - been looking all over the web for comments on it.
As you say there is a mix-up in the naming of angles. However I found that if you open the examples files (for instance Torus-knot) and use the spherical/cylindrical coordinates in that window phi suddenly works as expected.

Calculations

[(Anonymous)]

You say that grapher is not very good for calculations and such, but what about minimum and maximum. I just finished up Algebra 2 and we used this function to find the domain and range.