Just speaking anecdotally, I had the impression that math people prefer 1-based indexing. I've heard that Matlab is 1-based because it was written by math majors, rather than CS majors.
Indeed. I was going to point out that mathematicians choose the index based on whatever is convenient for their problem. It could begin at -3, 2, or whatever. I've never heard a mathematician complain that another mathematician is using the "wrong" index. That's something only programmers seem to do.
