Re: Re: Mathematica skill level snippet(s)
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg105034] Re: [mg105001] Re: Mathematica skill level snippet(s)
- From: "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net>
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:00:42 -0500 (EST)
- References: <hdjekb$blg$1@smc.vnet.net> <hdlkbk$hir$1@smc.vnet.net> <hdqb2s$6mn$1@smc.vnet.net> <33462681.1258454078384.JavaMail.root@n11>
There are really two issues here. 1) Color is a complicated phenomenon and it takes some skill and practice to learn how to use it. Basically how to use the Color Schemes palette, Blend, Lighter and Darker, how ..Data.. things work, and how to use Functions and Rescale and ColorFunctionScaling to do specific color design. Color is usually ancillary to some user's work. It is a skill users should learn before they get to college so they won't have to wrestle with it while working on their real problems. It's like spelling and grammar. It's just another example of why Mathematica won't truly come into its own until people routinely receive early training. 2) Mathematica is still a relatively new product. Twenty years is nothing. It will be a lot easier once a wider core of things gets settled down. We have to hope that this will happen, that WRI will make it a prime consideration, and the problems of a morphing instrument will diminish. In the meantime we suffer from being early users. But look on the bright side. You also get to be a pioneer. WRI doesn't know how to use Mathematica. Nobody knows. It's like saying Edison knew how to make movies. David Park djmpark at comcast.net http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/ From: AES [mailto:siegman at stanford.edu] In article <hdqb2s$6mn$1 at smc.vnet.net>, fd <fdimer at gmail.com> wrote: > Most of the complains about documentation, from my part, are when it > is too brief and does not contain many examples. In the ColorFunction > case I mention above, for example, the documentation gives you how to > retrieve all available options, but it is concealed - personally I > would show emphasize this a lot more, but the Mathematica developers > surely have a different set of personal preferences, so I do not > complain about it. I certainly recall a while back wanting to try our a variety of different ColorFunctions so I could find an optimal choice for a series of plots I was making, and finding the whole topic very complex and arcane, and the process of finding or creating demos of different functions very much of a hassle.