Stephan Wolfram : Math-ematica

Hyun Ik ChoiCOMP 1631

Winter 2011

Who is Stephan Wolfram?

Born in London, 1959

Educated in Eton, Oxford, Caltech

First scientific paper atthe age of 15

Ph.D in theoretical PhysicsIn Caltech at the age of 20

Youngest recipient of McArthur Prize Fellowship

Creator of Mathematicaand Wolfram Alpha

Author of A New Kind of Sci-ence

Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research

Wolfram Research

• Founded in 1987, by Stephen Wol-fram

• Software company – pioneers in computational science and computa-tional paradigm

• Main product : Mathematica• Also develops a web base application

: Wolfram Alpha

What is Mathematica?

• Computational software• Programmed in C language• Used in Science, Engineer, Mathe-

matics, and technical computing Professional areas

• Also used for educational purpose– E.g High School Calculus Class, Univer-

sity Linear Algebra Class

History of Mathematica

• Late 1970s• Stephen uses computeralgebra for his studys• Complex, time consu-ming• Stephen decides to build his own system

History of Mathematica

• December 1980• First draft for SMP– Symbolic Manipulation program– The prototype of Mathe-

matica– Runs on a mini comput-

er

History of Mathematica

• June 23rd 1988–Mathematica 1.0

released– Comes on 5 floppy

disks– The actual history of

Mathematica begins

History of Mathematica

• Now– November 15th 2010–Mathematica 8 releases– Continues to add functions and applica-

tions

How it looks like

A simple menu barfor various manipulation

A blank notebook that is mainy used in Mathe-matica(type in codes)

Mathematica Basics

• You should press Alt+Enter instead of just pressing Enter to get an output for your input

• Simply pressing Enter will only change the line in the notebook

• You also have to type in the exact function correctly (Upper case, Lower case Alphabet also matters when writing a code, just like writing a program with programming lan-guage)

Some Basic Functions

• Differentiation• D[f(x),x]

• Example• Input : D[x^2,x] Output : 2x

Unknown

Some Basic Functions

• Integration• Integrate[f(x),x]

• Example

Unknown

Some Basic Functions

• Plotting graphs• Plot[f(x),{x,min,max}]

• ExampleRange that will show

Demonstrations

• Pre-made materials for educational/demostrative purposes

• Over 5000 demonstrations available on internet

• Not only for math– All kinds of subjects

Demonstrations

• Examples of fields–Mathematics– Computation– Physical Science– Life Science– Business– Systems– Engineering– etc

Works Cited

• Stephen, Wolfram. “About Stephen Wolfram”

• www.stephenwolfram.com• www.wolfram.com/• demonstrations.wolfram.com