Beginning Mathematica
November 8, 1999

Mark Senn
mds@purdue.edu

Mathematica

Wolfram Research's Mathematica is an integrated technical computing environment. Mathematica is built on the powerful unifying idea that everything can be represented as a symbolic expression. For example, x + y is represented internally as Plus[x, y] and {x, y, z} is represented internally as List[x, y, z]. Graphics, matrices, notebooks, etc. are all represented using this same method. In Mathematica there are few concepts but they are used many different ways.

Mathematica is a very comprehensive software package. It can do numeric mathematics, symbolic mathematics, and graphics as can be viewed below.

Numeric Mathematics examples including...
Random Numbers
Range
Symbolic Mathematics examples including...
Differentiation
Integration
Matrix and Vector Operations
Solving Equations
Graphics examples...
(Includes MANY pictures. Patience is recommended while loading.)

The output of the three previous links represent what is on the screen when a Mathematica ``notebook'' is being used.

If you have Mathematica installed on your system here is how to use the notebook file for this:

Comparison of Purdue 300 and Purdue 800 Individual Heath Plans
Here is a real life example of how Mathematica can be used.

Interfaces

Mathematica comes with two interfaces: math and mathematica. Use mathematica when you want to use ``notebooks'' like this one. Use math to use a simple, dumb text interface. Here is a complete example of how to use math on Unix: 
	%math
	Mathematica 4.0 for solaris
	Copyright 1988 - 1999 Wolfram Research, Inc.
	--Motif graphics initialized--
	In@1D:=2+2
	Out@1D=4
	In@2D:= ^D
In retrospect I wish I had often used mathematica when I had used math.

Help

For Mathematica help see The Mathematica Book or the on-line help system. I suggest using the on-line help system, it has everything in the book on it plus some. And it's cheaper. To start the on-line help system on Unix type: mathematica , and click on the word Help near the upper-right corner of the window.