The course uses MATLAB for programming exercises - but this is expensive so I want to find alternatives. Octave was mentioned on the Coursera forum, and a quick Google revealed FreeMat. One blog also suggested Scilab.

The blog mentioned falls in favour of GUI Octave - so I'll pursue that option initially...

There's also a paper comparing the options here: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~gobbert/papers/SharmaGobbertTR2010.pdf (or locally)

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