Computing with Mathematica [Spiral-bound]

Hartmut F.W. Hoft (Author), Margret H. Hoft (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 1998

Computing With Mathematica is a student-friendly courseware which equips students with the necessary tools to use Mathematica to solve problems in their engineering, physics, statistics, mathematics, or computer science courses. As a tutorial, students will benefit from learning on their own how to use Mathematica for problem-solving in technical fields.
The authors have designed an accessible interactive text which consists of 12 electronic Mathematica notebooks for computation and visualization. This learning program is ideal for introducing students to computing with Mathematica and for investigating topics.


* Interactive, Mathematica-based text, electronic as well as printed version included
* Examples, challenging exercises, and interactive explorations from a variety of disciplines
* Wide variety of interesting and worth-while mathematical applications
* Integration of student projects as an essential component of the course; collection of student projects included
* Interactive text allows user to change examples and avenues of exploration

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Solve technical problems arising in fhe fields of mathematics, science, engineering, and computer science with this interactive learning tool. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

Computing with Mathematica is interactive courseware designed to teach students how to use Mathematica efficiently for solving problems arising in their major fields of study, such as mathematics, computer science, physics, or engineering. Examples, exercises, and applications build on core topics and concepts from each of these curricula. Computing with Mathematica is designed for interactive learning in a laboratory setting, teaching problem solving while using Mathematica as a tool for computation and visualization. This content can also be very useful for anyone needing to learn on their own how to use Mathematica for problem solving in technical fields.

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Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 290 pages
• Publisher: Academic Press; Bk&CD-Rom edition (September 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0123516609
• ISBN-13: 978-0123516602
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,179,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of Problems for Students to Work On, January 23, 2004

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W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Computing with Mathematica, Second Edition (Paperback)

Mathematica has become a common part of many undergraduates' toolkits, for those majoring in engineering or the physical sciences. Many undergraduate courses also use it, by assigning problems that explicity require running it to obtain answers. Certainly, its ability to perform symbolic algebra is excellent.

Given all this, the authors have produced a worthy book that meets a real need amongst some students for an explanatory text. In some ways, perhaps the most useful thing is the ample number of problems, that for a given topic, scale from simple to hard. Possibly the best way for the reader to assimilate the ideas and to be able to manipulate Mathematica facilely.

The book does not offer a comprehensive description of all the features of Mathematica. Which may be for the best, in terms of avoiding information overload on the student. Rather, it is seen as the place to defer to the official Mathematica online and hardcopy documentation.

3.0 out of 5 stars You'll learn Mathematica, but..., February 13, 2005

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From Detroit (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Computing with Mathematica, Second Edition (Paperback)

I'm using this text for a Mathematica course at an undergraduate level. Several of my previous math (calculus and beyond calculus) courses had me using Mathematica, but not really understanding what I was doing. This book has helped quite a bit.

The problems I have, however, is the exercises. A few times I've run into exercises that are of the form "(1) Do all these long, tedious steps; (2) Undo half of what you did, and redo it in a different way; (3) Write a paragraph explaining what you did and what you learned." It seems like these could have been streamlined just a bit.

This book claims to be suited for students with a background consisting of the basic calculus sequence and linear algebra (in other words, engineering math). Some of the problems are similar to what someone will see in a number theory course, advanced calculus or maybe even numerical analysis or discrete mathematics. None of these subjects are particularly terrible, but one can spend an hour or so trying to get a handle on the math behind the problem (speaking from experience), and then another hour trying to figure out how to get Mathematica do do what is asked. Being a math major, I welcome this, but it seems like a rather poor and inefficient way to teach someone with less of a background in math how to use Mathematica.

My final gripe is the wording of the problems. The instructions aren't always that instructive, and the goal you're asked to attain is sometimes a little too vague.

Ultimately, expect to learn how to use Mathematica through this book (which is the point of the text), but also expect to be VERY fursterated at times trying to figure out what the problem is asking or the mathematics behind it.