Mathematica/Elementary

These are draft notes from An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language

• Starting Out: Elementary Arithmetic (4:10)
  • Shift-Enter to perform a calculation
  • ^ for powers
  • asterisk for multiplication or space if it is clear
  • Keeps numbers as rational fractions if possible; converts to float with any floats involved
• Introducing Functions (6:09)
  • Commands use CamelCase
  • Arguments in square brackets
  • Colors: Blue=unknown command, purple=bracket mismatch
  • Plus, Times, Power, Max, Min, RandomInteger
• First Look at Lists (6:26)
  • Usually with { }
  • Edit->Extend Selection or CTRL-. will "grow" a selection to the next largest complete expression
  • ListLinePlot, ListPlot, Reverse, Range, Join
    • Range starts with 1
• Displaying Lists (4:54)
  • CTRL-= for natural language input
  • Graphics can be part of a list
  • BarChart, PieChart, NumberLinePlot, Colulmn,
• Operations on Lists (6:17)
  • List math operations are element-wise
  • [[ ]] will index from list
  • Sort, Length, Total, First, Last, Part, Take, Drop, Count, IntegerDigits
    • Mathematica is 1-indexed
• Making Tables (9:34)
  • Table
    • Table[item, number of items to generate]
    • Table[fcn[var], {var, start, end}]
    • Table[fcn[var], {var, start, end, step}]
    • Table[fcn[var], {var, {values}}]
  • The video has "ListPlot[Range[0, 1, 0.02]-Range[0, 1, 0.02]^2]" but "ListPlot[Table[x - x^2, {x, Range[0, 1, 0.02]}]]" seems more efficient
• Colors and Styles (7:22)
  • Red, Green, Blue, ColorNegate, Blend, RGBColor, Hue, RandomColor
  • Style takes an item along with information about color, size, and face
• Basic Graphics Options (7:54)
  • Graphics expression has graphics primitives that are changed by graphics directives
  • Graphics, Circle, Disk, RegularPolygon, Graphics3D, Sphere, Cone
  • Wrap graphics primitives with Style to change things
    • Thickness, Opacity
• Interactive Manipulation