The Howdy Glossary

Mathematica, developed by Wolfram Research, is a high-level programming language and interactive environment designed for symbolic computation across various scientific, mathematical, and engineering disciplines. It supports solving mathematical equations, performing calculus operations, manipulating algebraic expressions, and analyzing data. Additionally, it offers an extensive range of libraries and functions for creating graphics and visualization tools to generate complex plots and animations. The software was developed by Stephen Wolfram, a notable British-American computer scientist known for his contributions to computational tools.

Competitors of Mathematica include MATLAB from MathWorks, Maple by Maplesoft, and the open-source SageMath. MATLAB is widely used in numerical computing and data analysis within engineering and scientific research contexts. Maple provides functionalities similar to Mathematica's symbolic computation capabilities along with mathematical modeling and visualization tools. SageMath offers a collection of mathematical tools aimed at researchers, educators, and students while being freely available as an open-source software system.

What distinguishes Mathematica are its strong support for symbolic computation enabling algebraic manipulations beyond numerical values alone; its expansive built-in libraries covering diverse mathematical tasks; its sophisticated graphics capabilities allowing intricate plots and animations; all presented in an interactive user-friendly environment. These unique features make it particularly valuable for researchers, engineers, scientists as well as students who require advanced computational resources coupled with robust data representation techniques within their respective fields.