I'm currently getting into using Mathematica (build 6.0, for Mac), but I just wanted to know what people's experiences were getting used to these products were.

Without taking a class on these types of programs what's the best way to go about going from having a problem in a low level college algebra class to $profit using Mathematica (or similar program). Any advice on their practical use, nothing too complicated but would like tips!

5/30/2007 8:22:15 AM

It depends on the extent of you knowledge as to how useful Maple or Mathematica would be for you.

Maple and Mathematica can do 100% of everything you cover in any undergraduate math course and they both function similarly. Both support the use of functions / routines, which (depending on your skill level), can automate command sequences or calculations.

Maple includes every function I've ever used (even the Lambert W function). I haven't used Mathematica as extensively, but from what I've heard it is even more functional than Maple...

5/30/2007 10:48:26 AM

so how do I learn, limpy? Kind of like asking "For each topic, how would I use a graphing calculator to make this easier?", but for a computer program.

5/30/2007 2:41:01 PM

Haha I remember when I was taking Calc I, II, & III and I said to myself "damn I hate maple, I'm never gonna use it." I used it for just about every integral I had to perform from junior year up.

5/30/2007 7:17:36 PM

Hey, Wraith, it is actually really comforting to know that yes, these programs are practically useful to students in college etc., but I also would like to know how you learned to use them.

For your calc I,II,III classes and such where did you learn to apply the classroom stuff to the program's specific interface, and what did you do to get yourself well acquainted with using the program?

5/31/2007 10:39:56 AM

I learned how to use Maple in the labs that accompanied Calc I, II, & III. Although the labs went into detail about a bunch of stuff, I rarely used Maple to its full extent. I mostly just used it for differentiation, integration, simplifying/solving for a specific variable, and if the assignment required some kind of plot I would usually just print it directly off of Maple. If you type in "?xxx" where xxx is the command that you want to know how to use, it will bring up the help directory and tell you how to use it. If you don't know the name of the command, you can just type a command instead of the xxx that is related to what you are trying to do and browse to it. I'm not Maple wizz by any means, but if you have a question post it in here and I'll do my best to help answer it.

5/31/2007 4:18:19 PM

pm shanedidona he was one of my roommates and knew maple decently

5/31/2007 4:38:47 PM

Does anyone happen to know anyone that's familiar with Mathematica? It's actually the program I've started learning (it seems a little bit more intuitive on the Mac, anyway).

You guys have been really helpful, thanks for the advice and at least I'll know to get acquainted with this program really well before more upper level math classes.

5/31/2007 9:03:45 PM

Quote :

"aha I remember when I was taking Calc I, II, & III and I said to myself "damn I hate maple, I'm never gonna use it." I used it for just about every integral I had to perform from junior year up."

amen to that. I remember in power systems, my dumbass classmates who had a maple-phobia would attempt to solve these insane problems by hand (pages and pages of calculation). I cleared with the professor and just set up the problem and hit enter on maple. Print it out and get 100% credit. Since he was just concerned with us knowing how to set up the problem, it gave me better grades on the exams also since none of those questions were ever computationally intensive.

5/31/2007 9:12:46 PM

do yourself a favor and erase these programs from your memory. Use matlab instead.

5/31/2007 9:17:05 PM

matlab is good also, but it doesn't solve symbolic equations

5/31/2007 9:19:08 PM

alright so can we get a consensus on which programs are useful for which classes/practical applications? I know I'm not the only one out there who'd like something to take the heartache out of computation but there's alot of these types of programs out there

5/31/2007 9:57:01 PM

Matlab can solve symbolic equations when equipped with the Symbolic toolkit.

As a recent grad in electrical engineering, I swear by Matlab.

6/1/2007 2:31:57 AM

Someone interested in "low level college algebra" should stay away from matlab. Stick with Maple. I've never used mathematica.

6/1/2007 2:47:25 AM

After learning Maple when taking the Calculus courses at NC State, I decided to give Mathematica a try. I think I started learning it during my senior year (and with version 5.0), and quickly learned how incredibly powerful and easy to use the program is. What really turned me on initially to Mathematica was the interface. I loved how you could graphically enter your equations to make them look "pretty" as opposed to the standard "commandline" way of entering them on Maple. It reminds me a little of entering equations in the Equation editor for MS Word.

As I continued to learn the syntax, I forced myself to use it almost exclusively (where Matlab wasn't necessary) for all my symbolic calculations and differential solvers (I never have liked Matlab's ODE solver too much). It has always worked great for most every problem I needed to solve, and has almost every function I've ever used built in. It is extremely easy to define your own functions as well.

A couple of other neat things that I like are it's notebook interface, to where you can write your reports / papers directly in the Mathematica workspace right along with your calculations. I also like its ability to export into the LaTeX format (which is what I use for all my publications); it keeps me from having to write complex equations twice (once in Mathematica, and another time in my LaTeX paper).

The help system for Mathematica is phenomenal. The help browser can take a while to get used to, but with the search capabilities, you can easily find the help for what you're looking for. Plus, there are tons of websites that Google can help you find if you enter a couple of the Mathematica functions into the searchbox.

I do have a couple of gripes about Mathematica... Maybe it's just something I haven't learned yet... One problem I sometimes have is that Mathematica can be almost "too symbolic," in the sense that if you're running a complex calculation, and you're expecting a fairly simple result, the program can spit out these gigantic multi-page symbolic solutions containing these odd and abstract functions that you've never heard of before. Running a Simplify[] doesn't always help much, either.

Another gripe is that the debugging in v4 and v5 isn't that great. My best method is to simply use a lot of Print statements if I'm having an issue. I've heard that in v6, there is an integrated debugger with syntax highlighting to help you find your problems.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the program, and although I don't use it as much as I used to (I'm using Matlab almost exclusively now), I can highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good and thorough mathematic software package.

6/1/2007 8:06:44 AM

I've got this old Maple textbook that I got a couple years ago at Durham Tech. It's called "A Maple Approach to Calculus." You can have it if you want, I never want to touch Maple again .

6/3/2007 11:16:51 PM