Our current poll asks which math application or scripting/programming language you most frequently use (implied for analyses in bioinformatics). Of 696 respondents...

26% say they use R (http://www.r-project.org).
17% say they use Matlab (http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/).
12% say they use "a spreadsheet".

R is a Free/Open Source project modeled after the S language. But surprisingly, S/S-Plus, which is not Open Source, came in almost dead last with 1% of the vote.

As with S/S-Plus, Matlab has an Open Source counterpart: Octave (http://www.octave.org). But the reverse happened here, as Octave got only 2% of the vote.

It is also interesting to note that "a calculator or emulator" came in fourth, with 7% of the vote. I would think it's tricky doing genome analyses with a hand-held calculator. But, in all fairness, respondents probably didn't think we were limiting the use of these applications to bioinformatics.

The full results of the poll can be found here:
http://bioinformatics.org/poll/index.php?dispid=14&vo=14