[FireBringer]

Octave is good if you have to write matlab compatible code (or just like matlab and don't have access to it).

The new kid on the block Julia[1] is actually pretty nice and as someone who has written a lot of matlab code is quite similar and easy to learn.

If you don't need or want syntax similar to matlab python+scipy+numpy+matplotlib is pretty great.

I was stuck with matlab for most of my work though because of simulink+control systems toolbox and preexisting codebase.

[1]: http://julialang.org/

[vog]

> If you don't need or want syntax similar to matlab python+scipy+numpy+matplotlib is pretty great.

Yes, Python is a great alternative here. Especially for more complex computations, the advantages of a very well designed generic language play very well with the specialized math stuff.