Mini-course on Mathematica

Prof. Fred Simons gave a two-day introductory course on Wolfram Mathematica. The program comprised three modules:

Mathematica Basic Principles I

You will learn how to

• Understand the general structure of Mathematica
• Find your way in the Help system and documentation
• Perform exact calculations (manipulating formulas)
• Perform numerical calculations
• Create 2D and 3D graphs

Mathematica Basic Principles II, including pattern matching

Partly building upon the first module, this course expands further on:

• The structure of Mathematica expressions and ways to manipulate them
• functions defined using underscores and pure (or anonymous) functions
• functions that have functions as arguments, such as Select, Gatherby
• Associations
• pattern matching and the function Cases, sequences
• how to define a function on a given domain only, with optional arguments, etc
• options

Programming with Mathematica

All programming language functionality is available in Mathematica. Programs written in a standard programming language can be translated into a Mathematica program. However, this leads rarely to an efficient program. Often we can improve such a translation by using some more advanced Mathematica commands. Even better is to start from the very beginning and to use the structure of the dataset and the available functions in Mathematica for manipulation to arrive at the desired output. These principles will be demonstrated by many examples. Much attention will be paid to the speed of the programs.

Bring your laptops with Mathematica!

The course took place in the room Pauling of the Mendelev building and in the rooms Mirzakhani and Wunster/Montague of the building De Vinci according to the following schedule:

Monday, 21^st of March
Session 1 (Pauling): 9:00 – 12:00
Coffee-break: 10:30-10:45
Lunch break: 12:00-13:30
Session 2 (Pauling): 13:30 – 15:00
Coffee-break: 15:00-15:45
Session 3 (Mirzakhani): 15:45 – 17:15

Tuesday, 22^nd of March (room Wuster/Montague)
Session 1: 9:00 – 12:00
Coffee-break: 10:30-10:45
Lunch break: 12:00-13:30
Session 2: 13:30 – 17:00
Сoffee-break: 15:00-15:30

Biosketch of Prof. Dr. Fred Simons
Fred Simons was born in Amsterdam. He worked at the University of Amsterdam and the Eindhoven University of Technology where he promoted on Markov processes. He was also a member of the Dutch Education Committee for Mathematics and chairman of the Mathematics Working Group of SEFI, European Society for Engineering Eduction.