Ask LJ: freeware data tools

[ultimatepsi]

I have a large set of numerical data is a comma-separated values text file that I want to a) plot, b) find maxima and minimum of, c) apply functions to every point of. This is the kind of thing that I used to use Matlab for, but I don't have access to Matlab anymore and it isn't cheap. Excel or OpenOffice Calc can do these tasks, but I don't have

Comments

[sirroxton]

The god-grade answer is R, but that's... hard. I'd really have to recommend getting a copy of Excel somehow.

[ultimatepsi]

R seems a lot like MatLab, but it also doesn't like reading comma-separated value. WTF, that's a standard format.

[sirroxton]

Why do you say that? R has "read.csv".

[ultimatepsi]

Ah, so apparently it's only the documentation that is lacking. *sigh*

[sirroxton]

It's horribly organized. There's a completely separate manual for data import and export.