First you can do everything with Perl or through it.

One of the wrong stereotypes that I saw here in the University is that Perl is just a shell script language. But this was from a professor that saw Perl one time 10 years ago, and saw that it works fine for shell.

Also I saw other peoples that think that Perl is just for CGI, or Perl is CGI, and is only for that. And was also because they saw CGI 5 years ago and saw that CGI is Perl.

Also I saw other peoples saying that Perl is only BioPerl. And again is because they saw Perl working for that, and think that is only for that.

Well, next time that someone that think something about Perl, but don't know nothing about it, says something wrong. Just show 2 things, CPAN and all it's modules and what is possible to do with them (everything), and the ports page:
http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html

Than ask it if the other language have all this modules, and works in all this ports!

Now about speed, well, Perl have one of the best speeds, just lose for binary code. One thing I can tell you easy, Perl is 10 times faster than Java. ;-P

Now about your math work, well, take a look at http://search.cpan.org. I can guaranty that you will find something that you need.

And don't forget that Perl works, is pratical, fast and free. Also has one of the biggest communities of developers. Also your code will work in your Mac, Linux, Win32, etc...! ;-P

Note that I say that as a Java consultant, IT consultant and technology researcher. Soo, I need know very well the world around and all the different technologies. And Perl as a language that really does the job is the best.

Recently I have got 2 projects of US$ 100,00, to be build with a team of 3 people (yes, both projects). The same 2 projects were be made by 2 other teams of 10 people, for 1 year in Java. Soo, this 20 experts in Java, in 365, can't make the system work as they need. Soo, I show to the client that in 30 days my team was able to do all and more than what they did in 1 year, and also better. Soo, they lost the 2 projects, we send their work to the trash, and we got the 2 projects, that now are well done. Just because we use Perl, and my team have a lot of tools and technologies built to make the development faster and better. Soo, the option of Perl be open, and 100% malleable, is much more important than a language that "say" that is "stable and for big systems".