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**[GNU Octave][1]** is a high-level interpreted language,
primarily intended for numerical computations,
with built-in plotting and visualization capabilities.

[![GNU Octave 4.0.3 - Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0][screen-small]][screen]

[1]: http://www.octave.org
[screen]: {{ "/img/screenshot-2016.png" | relative_url }}
[screen-small]: {{ "/img/screenshot-2016-small.png" | relative_url }}

The GNU Octave language is quite similar to [Matlab][2]
so that most programs are easily portable.

[2]: https://www.mathworks.com/matlab

Octave is distributed under the terms of the
[GNU General Public License][3].

[3]: https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html



## News ([RSS]({{ "/feed.xml" | relative_url }}))

{% for post in site.posts limit:3 %}
- [{{ post.title }}]({{ post.url | relative_url }})
  ({{ post.date | date: "%b %-d, %Y" }})

  {{ post.excerpt }}
{% endfor %}



## Some Octave Examples

- Solve systems of equations with linear algebra operations on
  **vectors** and **matrices**:

{% highlight octave %}
b = [4; 9; 2] % Column vector
A = [ 3 4 5;
      1 3 1;
      3 5 9 ]
x = A \ b     % Solve $Ax = b$ by inverting A
{% endhighlight %}

- Visualize data with **high-level plot commands** in 2D and 3D:

{% highlight octave %}
x = -10:0.1:10 % Create an evenly-spaced vector from -10..10
y = sin(x)     % y is also a vector
plot(x,y)
{% endhighlight %}

![Sine plot]({{ "/img/plot.png" | relative_url }})



### Octave Forge

[Octave Forge](http://octave.sourceforge.net/)
is a central location for development of packages for GNU Octave,
similar to Matlab's toolboxes.
To install a package, use the pkg command from the Octave prompt by typing:

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<div class="columns medium-9">
{% highlight text %}
pkg install -forge package_name
pkg load package_name
{% endhighlight %}
</div>
<div class="columns large-3">
  <a href="http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.php" class="button expand">Browse Packages</a>
</div>
</div>