Re: Is Mathematica 3.0 book a good book/Manual? Re: Book recommendation
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg9697] Re: Is Mathematica 3.0 book a good book/Manual? Re: Book recommendation
- From: "charles loboz" <charles at please.no.spam.syacus.acus.oz.au>
- Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 01:31:37 -0500
- Organization: Unisys - Roseville, MN
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
After grappling with the problem for almost two years there is my idiosyncratic view: - Mathematica is a big system; simple things can be done simply; on this level books like Nancy Blachman are very good; but this will give you 1% of Mathematica; these books belong to the type 'excel for dummies' - you using 1% of excel capabilities, but that may be enough for you - if you need more - and you usually do - there is a spate of good, solid books in the middle level; like Gray, Kaufmann and many, many others. My personal preference is Patrick Tam 'A Physicist Guide to the Mathematica' as it gives good grounding in programming Mathematica with plenty of interesting examples. - if you want to _really_ learn Mathematica there is no better book than David B. Wagner 'Power Programming with Mathematica' - it explains how and why and also what's inside. Reading it a year ago would have saved me plenty of time. Worth reading - for beautiful style - are Meader's books. - Wolfram's book is to me like unix man pages. If you know what you want and you know Mathematica it is a very good book. It definitely does not replace any of the books previously mentioned. Sergio Rojas <sergio at scisun.sci.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote in article <64qqi6$jf7 at smc.vnet.net>... > richard j. gaylord (gaylord at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote: > : In article <64fh6e$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 > > >