Re: Book recommendation
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg9553] Re: Book recommendation
- From: Ersek_Ted%PAX1A at mr.nawcad.navy.mil
- Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 01:40:16 -0500
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Yes there are areas where a newbie has to go through great pain to get
the desired results.
But I think the big book answers most of the *obvious* questions to "How
can I ......".
I don't think we will ever get to the point where a newbie can quickly
find the answer to any question they might have. Even a newbie will
sometimes come up with problems that require fairly sophisticated
solutions. As with any large system, it will always require time and
effort for a user to become thoroughly acquainted with the system.
Consider the documentation to the examples you gave:
|: |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,
|
It wouldn't take long to skim section 1.9 (Graphics and sound) before
the user noticed ListPlot is the needed command. |
| 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
|
After going to section 2.11.7 the reader will find an example that does
just what the user is looking for on page 617.
In[4]:= data= ReadList["numbers", Number, RecordList->True]
Out[4]= {{11.1, 22.2, 33.3}, {44.4, 55.5, 66.6}} |
|and set up the data in a way allowing the plotting of columns 2 |and 3
versus column one.
|
For this you might ask, "how can I separate the data into columns". Well
the big book doesn't give a direct answer to this. But the user might
look up "Column" in the book on Standard Packages, and they are
referred to page 408. OK none of the examples are applicable, but the
syntax
Column[data, {n1, n2, ...}] is mentioned.
It turns out the following commands will do the trick: lst2=Column[data,
{1,2}]
lst3=Column[data, {1,3}]
|
|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?
|
Look up "ErrorBar" in the book on Standard Packages. You will be
referred to page 187, and will find a sample plot on page 188. |
| How many of them shows how to label |the plots using long or sort
labels? |
I didn't find any examples where PlotLabel is used, but it isn't hard
to find mention of PlotLabel, and the required syntax is fairly
straight forward.
I don't know what you mean by "long and sort labels".
Ted Ersek