Customer Reviews

A Physicist's Guide to Mathematica, Second Edition

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I read many Mathematica books, introductory and advanced - yet this one clearly stands out (even in this high quality field).

The title and the previous reviewer suggest that this is a book for physicists or physics students. This is quite unfortunate, as it may put off others from learning proper use of Mathematica from this book. True, the examples are from physics, but most of them are elementary physics, done by students of science, life sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering etc.

The reason why non-physicists should read that book is extremely clear exposure of three areas of Mathematica: a) introductory level use of mma as a simple calculator/grapher/equation solver; b) very good illustration on practical aspects of using mma to solve slightly larger problems - showing the right _methodology_ of mapping real world problems into mma so they can be solved neatly; c) very good introduction to programming in Mathematica on the introductory to intermediate level (with some hints of advanced)

I admit to having a strong bias towards this book - it is one of many introductory books I read and I regret it was not my first one. That would have saved me reading others - beginners, intermediate and advanced alike. [OK, I read them just to compare, anyway :-)]

If you need to apply Mathematica to study real physical systems,then i think you can find a lot of useful material in this book.The book begins with the use of Mathematica as an advanced interactive calculator and graphic display ,then elucidates its use as a programming language and finally shows a series of Mathematica packages that deal with specific problems in different physical areas.The author mixes explanations and hints with one to one reproduction of the computer screen inputs and outputs.The exposition is very clear and student-friendly.On the whole a great text!

The explanations are simple and efficient, direct to the point. Some exercises are very mechanical but the examples are physically motivated and interesting. The final chapters about physical problems are very good. I strongly recommend for undergraduate students who wants to make some didactically calculations about basics physics