Is Mathematica 3.0 book a good book/Manual? Re: Book recommendation
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg9648] Is Mathematica 3.0 book a good book/Manual? Re: Book recommendation
- From: sergio at scisun.sci.ccny.cuny.edu (Sergio Rojas)
- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 19:50:04 -0500
- Organization: City College Of New York - Science
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
richard j. gaylord (gaylord at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote: : In article <64fh6e$c6s$5 at dragonfly.wolfram.com>, "Sherman.Reed" : <sherman.reed at worldnet.att.net> wrote: : > 3. Mathematica is not for the faint hearted, it a serious and : > complicated computer based algebra tool for engineers and scientists : > who want to push the frontier, and are willing to pay the price for : > success. : my experience is that if you don't take the right approach, it can : indeed be difficult - but then its kind of difficult to reach : california by driving east from the midwest too :) No doubt almost everyone will follow the hard way when using a "tool" to do "something" IF the "tool"'s user documentation is not clear enough or poorly written. For instance, Driving in New York City is a real challenge to the occasional tourist, and the reason is due to the poor system of trafic management ( missing and badly placed signs, broken lights, cab drivers doing whatever comes to theirs mind, etc ). From time to time I used to say to anyone who ask me quetions about mathematica " I haven't been confronted with that situation yet, but let's look at the manual to see what is in there". The almost frequently response is: " I already look at the bible, but it does not say anything clear about it" or, "after reading that section, I became more confuse". So, I may still ask: How much money should one spend in documentation to understand how Mathematica works? Besides other things, I have learned (to some degree of self-satisfaction) Fortran, C, and Unix throgh theirs respective manuals, and I have had to use secondary source of information when trying to use fancy capabilities of such programs. From these three programming tools, Unix has been the hardest one, until I decided to use Mathematica in my work. The man pages of Unix are usually incomprehensible to this mortal. In my view, Mathematica online help (for Unix) is a waste of hard drive, and the Mathematica 3.0 book which "is intended to be a complete introduction to Mathematica, ..., assuming no prior knowledge of the system, ..., and makes it easy for you to learn the part you need for a particular calculation , ..., bla bla bla", need to be redisigned completely. It is a manual? It is a books that shows how to use the tool? What is it? Look for example the many posts questioning what is said in the book about manipulating different graphics formats with Mathematica. Cheers, Sergio