WOLFRAM

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Stephen Wolfram
An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language
Second Edition (2017)
What We Haven’t Discussed
There’s a lot more to the Wolfram Language than we’ve been able to cover in this book. Here’s a sampling of just a few of the many topics and areas that we’ve missed.

User Interface Construction

Set up a tabbed interface:
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User interfaces are just another type of symbolic expression; make a grid of sliders:
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Function Visualization

Plot a function:
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3D contour plot:
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Mathematical Computation

Do symbolic computations, with x as an algebraic variable:
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Get symbolic solutions to equations:
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Do calculus symbolically:
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Display results in traditional mathematical form:
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Use 2D notation for input:
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Numerics

Minimize a function inside a spherical ball:
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Solve a differential equation to get an approximate function:
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Make a plot using the approximate function:
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Geometry

The area of a disk (filled circle) of radius r:
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Make a shape by “shrinkwrapping” around 100 random points in 3D:
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Algorithms

Find the shortest tour of the capitals of Europe (traveling salesman problem):
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Factor a big number:
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Logic

Make a truth table:
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Find a minimal representation of a Boolean function:
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The Computational Universe

Run my favorite example of a very simple program with very complex behavior:
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RulePlot shows the underlying rule:
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Building APIs

Deploy a simple web API that finds the distance from a specified location:
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Create embeddable code for an external Java program to call the API:
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Document Generation

Documents are symbolic expressions, like everything else:
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Evaluation Control

Hold a computation unevaluated:
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Release the hold:
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Systems-Level Operations

Run an external process (not allowed in the cloud!):
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Encrypt anything:
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Parallel Computation

I’m running on a 12-core machine:
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Sequentially test a sequence of (big) numbers for primality, and find the total time taken:
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Doing the same thing in parallel takes considerably less time:
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