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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Mathematica programming: an advanced introduction

I don't know what people who go to watch a performance of the New York ballet actually experience. In the Black Swan Thomas Leroy ( played by Vincent Cassel ) says:

To beauty! - Thomas Leroy

I can't agree more. Beauty, it is probably the best word to describe what happens when we get touched by a piece of mathematics, or even a line of Mathematica code.

I found a free, Creative Commons licensed, book about Mathematica programming. I must emphasize that it is a book about programming the core Mathematica language. It is possible to solve and communicate about mathematical problems without actually programming Mathematica but there will come a time when your problems require ( some ) programming. Although Mathematica ships with extensive on-line documentation several ( excellent ) books have been written about the subject most of which I have reviewed in this blog. Among them, and not reviewed yet, is Mathematica programming: an advanced introduction.

An ideal reader for it would be a person who has some Mathematica experience as a user, needs to write programs more substantial than a few one-liners, and wants to understand the logic of the language and ways to program idiomatically, minimize programming effort and maximize program's efficiency. - Leonid Shifrin

I don't know why people write 'free' books. In general I am not in favor of free books simply because the author spent ( a lot of ) time creating the book and if it is of value to a reader some form of exchange needs to take place. Free does not mean 'of less quality' although it has to be said that an author of a free book is not helped by an editor. I can only say that I like Leonid Shifrin's Mathematica book and that I suggest you have a look at it. It can be read online, or downloaded as a PDF at his site http://www.mathprogramming-intro.org/

2 comments:

  1. I had a few reasons to write a book, mostly personal. At the time, I wanted to switch to other programming languages, and having left some notes to self on mma was important for me. Converting them into a book was some work, but I benefited from the result as well, and generally I think this was a good idea. If you found the book interesting, have a look at Mathematica community at StackOverflow - there are lots of things about mma programming nicely discussed there and not covered in my book.

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  2. Thanks. I have added the feed to the bloglist.

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(Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion, colloquially aka Raumpatrouille Orion was the first German science fiction television series. Its seven episodes were broadcast by ARD beginning September 17, 1966. The series has since acquired cult status in Germany. Broadcast six years before Star Trek first aired in West Germany (in 1972), it became a huge success.)