Mathematica Cookbook [Paperback]

Sal Mangano (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cookbook | Publication Date: May 12, 2010

Mathematica Cookbook helps you master the application's core principles by walking you through real-world problems. Ideal for browsing, this book includes recipes for working with numerics, data structures, algebraic equations, calculus, and statistics. You'll also venture into exotic territory with recipes for data visualization using 2D and 3D graphic tools, image processing, and music.

Although Mathematica 7 is a highly advanced computational platform, the recipes in this book make it accessible to everyone -- whether you're working on high school algebra, simple graphs, PhD-level computation, financial analysis, or advanced engineering models.

• Learn how to use Mathematica at a higher level with functional programming and pattern matching
• Delve into the rich library of functions for string and structured text manipulation
• Learn how to apply the tools to physics and engineering problems
• Draw on Mathematica's access to physics, chemistry, and biology data
• Get techniques for solving equations in computational finance
• Learn how to use Mathematica for sophisticated image processing
• Process music and audio as musical notes, analog waveforms, or digital sound samples

Editorial Reviews

Review

"For those willing to spend the time, effort and money, Mathematica Cookbook is a worthy purchase for the discerning Mathematica user."

--Mike Riley - Dr Dobbs Code Talk

The Mathematica Cookbook does a good job of showing the wide range of capabilities of the Mathematica program... --Jerry Pournelle, Chaos Manor, The User's Column, August 2010, Column 360

[Mathematica CookBook] supplies a number of very nice examples with which to extend user expertise. --John A. Wass, Ph.D., Scientific Computing

About the Author

Sal Mangano has been developing software since the days Borland Turbo C and has worked with an eclectic mix of programming languages and technologies. Sal worked on many mission-critical applications, especially in the area of financial-trading applications. In his day job, he works mostly with mainstream languages like C++ and Java so he chooses to play with more interesting technology whenever he gets a chance.

Sal's two books (XSLT Cookbook and Math Mathematica Cookbook) may seem to be an odd pair of technologies for a single author but there is a common theme that reflects his view at what makes a language powerful. Both Mathematica and XSLT rest on the idea of pattern matching and transformation. They may use these patterns in different ways and transformations to achieve different ends but they are both good at what they do and interesting to program in for a common reason. Sal's passion for these languages and ideas comes through in both these cookbooks. He also likes to push technologies as far as they can go and into every nook and cranny of application. This is reflected in the wide mix of recipes he assembled for these books.

Sal has a Master's degree in Computer Science from Polytechnic University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 828 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (May 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596520999
• ISBN-13: 978-0596520991
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I fell in love with science at a very young age but got hooked on computers and mathematics only much later. I have had most of my professional experience programming complex trading systems in C++ but have more of a personal passion for AI, Genetic Algorithms, pure Computer Science and advanced software development paradigms and certain areas of theoretical math (although my ability on the mathematical side is not quite on par with my passion).

My two books XSLT Cookbook and Mathematica Cookbook are about very different technologies but there is a common theme that runs through both XSLT and Mathematica - pattern matching and transformation. This is one of the most powerful paradigms in computer science.

I like the cookbook format because word for word, cookbooks are the most useful of all technical books. Cookbooks teach by example and that is how people learn. Cookbooks are about getting things done.

Both XSLT and Mathematica are sort off the beaten path type languages and that tells you a bit about me.

XSLT is a very particle skill to have if you find yourself needing the deal with XML a lot. If you manipulate XML using straight DOM programming you are really doing way to much work in many cases. Give XSLT a try.

Mathematica is probably the single most useful system there is for experimental use of a computer. If you work in the IT industry chance are slim you will ever need Mathematica skills. BUT, if you like to tinker with ideas and data, if you like to explore mathematical and scientific concepts, if you want to know how it feels to discover beauty in a few lines of code THEN you really ought to give Mathematica a try. This used to be an expensive proposition but Wolfram has a fully functional HOME Edition of Mathematica. At about $300 it is probably the single best software investment you will ever make. If you are a student, it is even less.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars recipes for indirect cooking, July 10, 2010

By 

Ecomo "Eco" (Holiday Inn, Santa Cruz, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mathematica Cookbook (Paperback)

The title suggests that the reader is already acquainted with handling the ingredients: the core programming language plus one of its five possible programming styles. Procedural programming, functional programming, rule-based programming, object-oriented programming, or recursive programming. When you then work on a larger program and get stuck because you forgot about the details of an implementional task, then reaching for a ready-to-use recipe from a cookbook should solve your task? Yes! Nice idea. The book offers hundreds of fine recipes, always in the typical Mathematica one-liner program format and all classified into easy-identifiable subject areas. So the problem is not finding out whether the book covers the implementional task or on which exact page to locate it. You will very quickly figure it out - the book is perfectly organized this way, for this purpose. And once found, the interested programmer should be able to adopt the recipe's code or idea. No. The true problem with the book and its collection of recipes is ..etc.. Anyway. I welcome Mangano's work. In an indirect way it teaches a lot of wisdom on practical and every-day-use programming, even if the suggested codes not always represent the most efficient codification possible. In comparison, if efficiency and code perfectionism matters, another notable new book in this area (Programming with Mathematica 6.0/7.0, Mathematica As A Programming Language) is Leonid Shifrin's publication (googel, wiki) which, too, contains collections of 'Recipes' (in an effort to be fair and overly modest, he calls them simply 'examples'). Shifrin explains more the intermediate steps (typical one-liner programs) how to get to the final readycode, and in addition, presents several(!) alternative implementations (written in the same programming paradigm with a refined or optimized algorithm/idea, or written in one of the four other programming paradigms) of the same 'Recipe' which are much more efficient and thus, suitable to RL large-scale applications. Shifrin starts where Mangano stops! Depending on your level of programming expertise the one book or the other suits your needs better, so check them out both :) I highly recommend Mangano's book, and even higher Leonid Shifrin book.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars book is available in *.nb-format, too!!!, June 18, 2010

By 

Mark Twain "Sam" (Florida, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mathematica Cookbook (Paperback)

Mathematical scientists probably prefer Weisstein's The CRC Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Third Edition (3 volumes incl. code for Mathematica 7.0) for their research work, true fans adore the sheer thoroughness of Trott's Mathematica Guidebook and study the details page-after-page by working the way up from the bottom through all 4 volumes, total beginners and hasty users are content with a shallow but broad(!) introduction found in Mathematica Navigator, and for all remaining Mathematica practicionists Mangano's tome comes in handy as a helpful complement to the existing Tutorial Collection, see bit.ly/TheMathematicaBook . I've been knowing the software for quite some time and for my engineering studies it never meant more to me than an overpowered calculator but since the book is currently being sold in mass quantities at our campus bookstore I got re-interested too! About the contents: Each recipe has the same setup structure (problem,solution,discussion,reference) and is independent from other recipes apart from incidental crossreferences within the book. Some recipes (there arent too many in total actually) are more general (true recipes), some just explain the use of important key functions (because many users still would not know their use or meaning ;), and some are solutions to very specific problems, so all in all a good mix to learn from! Much material has been compiled and quoted from others but the author would always mention the references in detail or link to them (i didnt know bit.ly before, thanks! ;). The book offers everything a modern book should offer: a personal book webpage with additional and updated contents, a publisher's webpage with eventual typographical errors, the software itself (a Mathematica version is included!), a *.pdf-ebook version, a colorful fulltext *.nb-Mathematica notebook version, support by the makers, etc. So. I dont think that I will actually put the recipes into practice for my mundane mathematical calculations in place of some old TI calc but simply reading and understanding the refined tricks is so instructive, enjoyable and inspiring. All persons involved did a fantastic job with this product release, congrats!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't lose time, just pick out your code!, June 15, 2010

By 

Teddy (Albany, Troy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mathematica Cookbook (Paperback)

The story doesnt end with the printed paperback (USD 64.99 original price, ouch!), the author has launched a homepage at mathematicacookbookDOTcom to accompany the book. An excellent idea to support (the interest of) its readers for the time to come. The book is basically a compilation of the most important Mathematica HowTo's (selected from the original source/resource: guide/HowToTopics!!) and spiced with the author's original recipe codes in an applied manner. If you want to use the recipe codes from the text you will have to rewrite most/all of it from scratch while adopting the idea or core algorithm from the examples. The main difference between the original Mathematica guide/HowToTopics and the Oreilly version is that the latter features longer, more complicated and full solutional codes to a specific task (or 'problem'). As just mentioned, you cannot just copy the code, change a few Bytes and ready you are. No. You *must* rewrite everything. By doing so, you will learn a lot though.. especially if you had some trouble understanding other books on the same topic. I agree with some other amazon reviewer in that, if time permits, first and foremost reading should be the amazing installed 'Virtual Book' ( which includes howto/* and tutorial/* ). After that you can choose between the 'Function Navigator' ( guide/* and ref/* ), the Trott Guidebook, the Mathematica Navigator, and Mathematica Cookbook. Both references are equally wise choices! Btw, included with this book is a free 30 day trial of the latest Wolfram Mathematica® v7.x software. Maybe that's why de book is so expensive. Anyway, go'n get it now, it's currently the bestselling Mathematica book on amazon! Thanks to the author for publishing an Oreilly cookbook for Mathematica 7, i love it!! :x