Mathematica at the Department of Telematics

What is mathematica

Mathematica is a "universal tool" for numerical and symbolic mathematics, as well as computing in the sense of realizations of algorithms and handling of data structures. It may also be considered as a programming language which allows various styles of programming (procedure-, function-, list-, rule-oriented, etc.) as well as it allows a mixture of these. Mathematica has also functionality for plotting, animations and audio. In addition, the tool has a notebook functionality which enables an integrated documentation of the work. For futher information and a brief comparison with alternative tools see Wikipedia.

At the department, mathematica is used for exercises in courses, labs and project & thesis work, as well as in the research.

Access to the Mathematica installations

The currently version available is 5.0 for all platforms (Macintosh, Windows xxx, and Linux) with a network license for a limited (but hereto sufficient) number of simultaneous users. 

For student usage, Mathematica is installed  at all workstations in the departments computer rooms and labs, i.e. Serengeti A 272 and Ngurunguru A 268, First floor Building A, Gobi B-206, First floor Building B,  as well as the Sahara Lab F272, First floor west wing of Building F, in the "Elektro" complex..

• Students at the Dept. of Telematics having access (key-card) to the Department's premises also have access to the above computer rooms.
• Other students following courses or having project assignments requiring Mathematica should ask  how to obtain user rights.

If you experience any problem, be free to contact Technical support.

How to get started

In spite of its rich functional repertoire, the tool is reasonably easy to get started with. It has a syntacs which is consistent and common to all functions. This makes it easy to extend the use to new areas. To get started you may consult:

• Mathematica has a complete on-line documentation under 'Help'. In addition to the above memo, it may be useful to have a look at the following items in 'Help':
  • Getting started/demos --- Tour of mathematica.
  • The Mathematica book --- Practical introduction
    
• On the network you'll find a list of tutorials and more resources in http://math.fullerton.edu/mathews/N250L/MathematicaTutorials.html  
• Some spesific suggestions
  • Essential Mathematica for Students of Science; James J. Kelly [University of Maryland].  As a start, the notebooks
  • getting started
  • plotting
  • lists
  • functions
  •  Mathematica tutorials; David withoff (from Wolfram)
  • A flash animation of  some Mathematica functions
• "Google", make a search with [mathematica  tutorial] and you will find a lot of step by step introductions to Mathematica.

Advanced users may get some valuable hints in the Supplementary Mathematica Help Browser.