[Mr. Lim]

Two programs that are good at what they do.

I use Excel on a regular basis, and when it comes to quickly summing, averaging, and doing simple manipulation on smaller sets of data, I wouldn't use much else.

When engineering though, it's like comparing apples to oranges. The first jaw-dropping experience I had with Matlab was a 2nd year Signals and Systems lab at Kettering University (formerly GMI).

We modeled a few simple circuits: low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and notch filters. The aspiring EEs and CEs among us know that these simple circuits can be broken down into equally simple equations (the impulse response). At that time we'd just learned about calculating a system's response by convoluting the input function with the impulse response, and how exhausting of a process it was to do manually.

And then came MATLAB...

We sampled about 5 seconds of audio at 44.1kHz 16-bit, and got a nice big dataset into MATLAB. Then we played back the convoluted result... all within MATLAB. It was insane...

In short, we we able to model, test and tweak an audio filter without ever touching a single capacitor, inductor or resistor. We could adjust any one of our parameters, and instantly hear the results.

It was at that moment I understood the difference between an engineering math package, and Excel.

It was also at that moment how much money I could make with a hammer, a microphone, MATLAB, and a penchant for making things quieter =)...

-SlimBoJones...