Customer Reviews

Computational Recreations in Mathematica

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This work is best suited for math lovers and programmers that already have Mathematica on their computer (version 1.2 will work, though the book presumes version 2.0 or above).

Programmers: If you want to practice writing Function based programming techniques and get away from linear based styles like C, Pascal, etc. this book is great. It is more fun than other books on Mathematica programming since it is oriented around puzzles rather than lessons.

Math Lovers: If you love Number Theory and want to see beutiful explorations, this book is great. Certain chapters are more challenging than others, but there is plenty here for hours of exploration!

The book is a mixture of (1) Mathematica programming insights I hadn't seen elsewhere --- taking my skills to a radically new level, (2) broad mathematical insights that, as a career mathematician, I really enjoyed, and (3) extremely narrow-focus material on primes and calendars, etc., that will be of interest to a select few. I was amazed to see that one computation --- finding the first two Wieferich primes --- was said to take 10.5667 seconds on a Sun workstation (in 1991 or before, I assume). On my Pentium II notebook PC, it took 0.04 seconds!