Contents

Preface

1. Getting Started

1.1 Mathematica, an Integrated Technical Computing System

1.2 First Steps

1.3 The Help System

1.4 Basic Ideas

1.5 Computational Capabilities

1.6 Utilities

1.7 Editing Notebooks

1.8 Sharing Notebooks

1.9 The Wolfram Cloud

1.10 Additional Resources

2. Data Analysis and Manipulation

2.1 Lists

2.2 Importing/Exporting

2.3 Descriptive Statistics

2.4 Application: Analysis of the Evolution of Two Cell Populations

2.5 Application: Global Energy Consumption Analysis

2.6 Database Access with Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

2.7 Additional Resources

3. Programming: The Beauty and Power of the Wolfram Language

3.1 Mathematica’s Programming Language: The Wolfram Language

3.2 Functional vs. Procedural Programming

3.3 Set vs. SetDelayed

3.4 Matrices and Lists Operations

3.5 How Mathematica Works Internally

3.6 Apply, Map and Other Related Functions

3.7 Iterative Functions

3.8 Pure Functions

3.9 Global and Local Variables

3.10 Conditional Expressions

3.11 Accuracy and Precision

3.12 Choosing the Method of Computation

3.13 Optimizing the Computation Time

3.14 Cloud Deployment

3.15 Package Development

3.16 Advanced Programming Tools

3.17 Additional Resources

4. Interactive Applications, Image Processing, and More

4.1 Manipulate

4.2 Creating Demonstrations

4.3 Image Processing

4.4 Graphs and Networks

4.5 Mazes

4.6 Application: Finding the Period of a Pendulum

4.7 Advanced Calculus

4.8 Additional Resources

5. Accessing Scientific and Technical Information

5.1 Computable Data: Doing Computations with Data from Different Fields

5.2 Astronomy

5.3 Nuclear and Particle Physics

5.4 Engineering

5.5 Chemical and Physical Properties of Elements and Compounds

5.6 Genomics and Proteomics

5.7 Meteorology

5.8 Combining Data and Graphics

5.9 Geodata

5.10 Some Recommendations

5.11 Additional Resources

6. Probability and Statistics

6.1 The Latest Features

6.2 Statistics Data

6.3 Probability Distributions

6.4 Application: Fitting Experimental Data

6.5 Time Series Analysis

6.6 Cluster Analysis

6.7 Stochastic Processes

6.8 Reliability and Survival Analysis

6.9 R Integration with RLink

6.10 Application: Predicting Outputs Using Machine Learning Methods

6.11 Application: Development of a Package for Quality Control

6.12 Additional Resources

7. Calculating π and Other Mathematical Tales

7.1 The Origins of π

7.2 Archimedes’ Approximation

7.3 π with More Than One Billion Decimals

7.4 Buffon’s Method

7.5 Application: Are the Decimal Digits of π Random?

7.6 The Strange Connection

7.7 The Riemann Hypothesis

7.8 Additional Resources

8. Looking at the Sky

8.1 A Short Astronomical Walk

8.2 Stargazing

8.3 Application: Determining the Color of the Stars

8.4 The Measurement of Distances Across the Universe

8.5 Application: Binary Systems and the Search for Extrasolar Planets

8.6 Light Curves

8.7 Additional Resources

9. Nuclei and Radiations

9.1 What are Isotopes?

9.2 Decay Constants, Decay Periods and Half-Lives

9.3 Decay Chains

9.4 Application: Modeling the Evolution of a Chain of Isotopes Over Time

9.5 Application: Dating the History of Humankind

9.6 Application: Calculating Binding Energies

9.7 Additional Resources

10. Modeling: Applications in Biokinetics

10.1 Compartmental and Physiological Modeling

10.2 Application: Fitting a Model

10.3 Optimal Experimental Designs (OED)

10.4 Biokmod: Applications to ICRP Models

10.5 Radiation Attenuation

10.6 Additional Resources

11. Economic and Financial Applications

11.1 Financial Information

11.2 Financial Functions

11.3 Optimization

11.4 The Shortest Path Problem

11.5 Optimum Flows

11.6 Additional Resources

12. Faster, Further

12.1 Parallel Computing

12.2 Parallel Programming

12.3 Application: The Mandelbrot Set

12.4 Application: Comparing Organisms Genetically

12.5 Grid Computing with Wolfram Lightweight Grid Manager (WLGM)

12.6 Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)

12.7 Mathematica for the Web: webMathematica

12.8 Software Development with Wolfram Workbench

12.9 New Applications and Functionality Integrated in Mathematica

12.10 Additional Resources

Index