Wolfram Research The Mathematical Explorer (PC & Mac)

by Wolfram Research, Inc.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006LFFW
• Item model number: CP4*3301
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 3, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,612 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The Mathematical Explorer is recreational software for mathematics hobbyists and others intrigued by mathematics and some of its more challenging topics. Delving into some of the most important mathematical concepts, The Mathematical Explorer combines text, graphics, and formulas in an easy-to-use notebook interface that is completely interactive. Lessons cover a wide range of topics and contain a wealth of relevant information, including historical introductions and biographies where applicable, questions and answers, and related notes and references. The Mathematical Explorer runs on Macintosh and Windows platforms.

From the Manufacturer

What is a space-filling curve? What is the mathematical basis behind cryptography? How does the scanner at your grocery store know when it hasn't scanned a UPC number correctly? Now that Fermat's Last Theorem has been solved, what's the next big challenge for mathematicians? These questions and others are part of the explorations you will take in The Mathematical Explorer.

The Mathematical Explorer is for everyone, young or old, who has ever delighted in finding the unexpected. You won't need a degree in higher math; all you'll need is a little basic algebra and a sense of fun. More than just an electronic textbook, The Mathematical Explorer is part guide, part calculator, part museum, part textbook--and completely fun!

Based on Mathematica technology, this stand-alone product combines text, graphics, and formulas in an easy-to-use notebook interface that is completely interactive, making you a participant and not just a spectator to mathematical ideas. The Mathematical Explorer invites you to explore many interesting questions about both physical and abstract phenomena and to gain insight by computation and visualization.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mathematica - Lite, I suppose, December 28, 2002

By 

Patrick Mueller (Apex, NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wolfram Research The Mathematical Explorer (PC & Mac) (CD-ROM)

I don't own, and have never used Mathematica, the big (expensive) product from Wolfram Research. I put this particular product on my Wish List cause it looked kind of interesting. Turns out, that I guess this is really a scaled down version of Mathematica. Easy to imagine they wanted to be able to get a lower-end product out of the door to lure folks up to the big one.

So, it's pretty cool. Calculated Pi up to 1000 decimal points or so, printed out a google so my kids could see it, etc.

The only really irksome thing about this product, is they have this section called "Demos", which seems to a set of links to notebooks that you can run only with "real" Mathematica. They have a little parenthetical note at the beginning of every notebook in the Demo section that says something to the effect "You may not be able to run the calculations in this Notebook with the custom version of Mathematica that you have". Um ... duh! Why do I want to see this? It's really teasing, since there is no way I can afford the big product. To be positive, I'll call it advertising. But for $[amount] or whatever, I'd prefer the advertising to be the slick flyers inserted in my product box only, not something in my face all the time.

Of course, I think I can probably figure out how to get rid of it also; Mathematica seems to be fairly extensible.

Also on the negative, the usability is lacking. The odd syntax I can deal with; the weird keystroking, and the lack of things I just expect to work (like scrolling a text area with a mouse wheel) are the kind of things that bug me to no end.

But, in the end, for me, a math- and computer-geek, this is a cool toy.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't pay more than you'd pay for a paperback., May 3, 2004

By 

Bobby R. Treat "DrMajorBob" (Round Rock, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wolfram Research The Mathematical Explorer (PC & Mac) (CD-ROM)

First of all, it isn't a Mathematica package; it's a crippled version of Mathematica plus content organized as help files. If you're not a Mathematica user and don't intend to be, this will be a puzzling combination for you. If you ARE a Mathematica user, you'll be frustrated that you can't import the content and evaluate it in Mathematica; nor can you work in the Explorer, with standard functions and packages you're used to. Inevitably you'll want to EXPLORE something that these limitations makes impossible. Don't waste your money.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really quite good, March 7, 2004

By 

Gavin Scott (Sunnyvale, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wolfram Research The Mathematical Explorer (PC & Mac) (CD-ROM)

There are two sides to this product. The first an electronic "book" on mathematics by Stan Wagon, and the second is the system in which that book is presented which is basically a "lite" version of the <very expensive> Mathematica package.

Stan Wagon writes probably the most interesting and useful books on using the Mathematica system. Here he has collected what amounts to a "best of" list of topics that will be enlightening to anyone interested in the study of mathematics.

Topics range from prime numbers, to calculus, to how to stack overhanging dominoes and many others.

The book is presented in Mathematica's help-browser format which allows you you navigate through the sections and all the expressions presented are "live" in that you can edit them and re-evaluate them using the built-in Mathematica system.

Besides the fascinating and well-presented material that makes up the primary content of this title, you you also get a somewhat limited version of Mathematica 4.0.2 using the same "notebook" interface as the full Mathematica product. This differs from the professional and student versions of Mathematica by only including a limeted number of the functions available in the full product, but the functions included include all the core features and a typical Mathematica user might go for quite a while before noticing that anything is missing. This version also lacks the irritating node-locked copy protection of the student version (though the license only permits installation on a single system, it is at least fully transferrable).

At about half the cost of the student version of Mathematica this package is more than worth its price for either the version of Mathematica it includes *or* Stan Wagon's excellent mathematical content.

Highly recommended.

G.