A Beginner's Guide to Mathematica

ISBN-13: 9781584884675 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 736 str.

David McMahon; Daniel M. Topa

Opis

Because of its large command structure and intricate syntax, Mathematica can be difficult to learn. Wolfram's Mathematica manual, while certainly comprehensive, is so large and complex that when trying to learn the software from scratch -- or find answers to specific questions -- one can be quickly overwhelmed.
A Beginner's Guide to Mathematica offers a simple, step-by-step approach to help math-savvy newcomers build the skills needed to use the software in practice. Concise and easy to use, this book teaches by example and points out potential pitfalls along the way. The presentation starts with simple problems and discusses multiple solution paths, ranging from basic to elegant, to gradually introduce the Mathematica toolkit. More challenging and eventually cutting-edge problems follow. The authors place high value on notebook and file system organization, cross-platform capabilities, and data reading and writing. The text features an array of error messages you will likely encounter and clearly describes how to deal with those situations.
While it is by no means exhaustive, this book offers a non-threatening introduction to Mathematica that will teach you the aspects needed for many practical applications, get you started on performing specific, relatively simple tasks, and enable you to build on this experience and move on to more real-world problems.

Spis treści

INTRODUCTION AND SURVEY
Why Mathematica?
Notebooks
Entering data
Data structures
Programming
Standard add-on packages
Miscellaneous packages
Palettes
Other resources
In conclusion

COMPUTATION EXAMPLES
The quadratic equation
Singular matrices and inversion
Linear regression
An inverse problem

GRAPHICS EXAMPLES
Graphics primitives
Plotting in two dimensions
Pictionary of 2D graphic types
Plotting in three dimensions
Rotation through parity states

ORDINARY DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
Defining, entering and solving differential equations

TRANSFORMS
Properties of linear integral transforms
The Laplace transform
The Fourier transform
The z-transform

INTEGRATION
Basic integrals: polynomials and rational functions
Multivariate expressions
Definite integration
Integrals involving the Dirac delta function
Using the Integrate command
Monte Carlo integration

SPECIAL FUNCTIONS
The Gamma function
The Bessel functions
The Riemann zeta function
Working with Legendre and other polynomials
Spherical harmonics

Appendices
References
Index

O autorze

David McMahon, Daniel M. Topa