The Mathematica ® Primer

This book is a short, focused introduction to Mathematica, the comprehensive software system for doing mathematics. Written for the beginning user, this engaging book contains an explanation of essential Mathematica commands, as well as the rich Mathematica interface for preparing polished technical documents. Mathematica can be used to graph functions, solve equations, perform statistics tests, and much more. In addition, it incorporates word processing and desktop publishing features for combining mathematical computations with text and graphics, and producing polished, integrated, interactive documents. You can even use it to create documents and graphics for the Web. This book explains everything you need to know to begin using Mathematica to do all these things and more. Written for Mathematica Version 3, this book can also be used with earlier versions of Mathematica, and even intermediate and advanced users may find useful information here, especially if they are making the switch to Version 3 from an earlier version.

Preface; 1. Getting started; 2. Mathematica basics; Practice set A: Algebra and arithmetic; 3. Mathematica notebooks; 4. Beyond the basics; 5. Mathematica graphics; Practice set B: Calculus and graphics; 6. Applications; 7. Mathematica and the Web; 8. Troubleshooting; Solutions to the practice sets; Glossary; Index.

This book is a short, focused introduction to Mathematica, the comprehensive software system for doing mathematics. It contains an explanation of the essential Mathematica commands, and of the rich Mathematica interface for preparing polished technical documents.