Re: Book recommendation for
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg9498] Re: Book recommendation for
- From: sergio at scisun.sci.ccny.cuny.edu (Sergio Rojas)
- Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 23:04:30 -0500
- Organization: City College Of New York - Science
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Ersek_Ted%PAX1A at mr.nawcad.navy.mil wrote:
: |Even though one may find
: |a lot of references about Mathematica, few of them are really useful,
: |and the end result is that the program is still poorly documented, |
: Yes, it bugs me that there is virtually no documentation for the menu
: command in Version 3.0.
: But the Mathematica Book (3rd edition) is 1400 pages, and documents the
: Kernal features very well.
I still do not get what is it that makes the thick Mathematica 3.0
book a well documented reference. In my understanding, a well
organized documentation for something will allow the user to find what
is needed without need of going to a THOROUGHLY review of the
documentation. Moreover, it usually happen that while browsing a well
written documentation set, looking for a particular subject, one finds
information about others things that are not of need for that moment,
but will be so later on. This, in my view, is not the case of the
thick Mathematica book, and it can be illustrated in the process of
creating an acceptable 2-D plot ready to be included in a document.
Let's say there is a file containing 3 columns of data and the idea
is to plot , to make it simple, columns 2 and 3 versus column one
separately. A QUICK look at the book only shows plot of functions, so
one goes to the index. In the way one take notes of pages 133, 492, and
1042 for AxesLabel and some other things that may be needed to complete
the goal. However, one finds NOTHING close to "plot of data". But, a
somewhat "special" intuition let the initiated suspect that ListPlot
is what is needed, so the user goes to page 157, and there it is !!!
section 1.9.9 "Plotting List of Data". The initiated find that the
example on page at the beginning of page 159 is more or less fine
(except for the labels), and goes to section 1.11.3 in order to read
the data file. After reading section 1.11.3, no way to put the data
in the form given on page 159, so the initiated go to section 2.11.7,
but to find out that still it is NOT SHOW how to read a file with 3
columns and set up the data in a way allowing the plotting of columns 2
and 3 versus column one. The end result is that the great thick book is
put to a side, and some other books need to be looked at to find what
is needed.
Other things to look at are: How many plots, in the great book,
shows the plotting of error bars? How many of them shows how to label
the plots using long or sort labels? How many ...
Sergio