What is Mathematica?
The developers of Mathematica describing it as a “system of doing mathematics by computer”. Essentially, it’s a programming language, but it’s much more than that.
- It has a powerful front end, capable of producing near-production quality output (if you’re satisfied with the output of Microsoft Word, Mathematica will definitely be sufficient for you, but LaTeX users might be more finicky).
- It can export its cross-platform notebooks as text, HTML, TeX, EPS, PDF and many other formats
- It is suitable for use in many fields. It is widely used in mathematics, physics, engineering, economics, education, social sciences, finance, statistics and even music.
Mathematica takes a fair bit of memory, but it works, it can do all sorts of stuff you don’t expect and it’s incredibly powerful. Also the manual makes sense, which is more than I can say for some of its rivals. :-P
For more information, see:
- www.wolfram.com, the website of Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica
- MathGroup moderated user group (news://comp.soft-sys.mathematica or http://www.mathgroup.com/)