Mathematica frustrations...
- To: mathgroup@smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg11070] Mathematica frustrations...
- From: brett@spam-sucks.boxmail.com
- Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 20:32:22 -0500
- Organization: Transmeta Corporation
I have recently started learning Mathematica. I'm trying to use it for some data analysis and plotting, but so far I'm not having much luck. There are a few specific things that are troubling me, and I'd really appreciate hearing any advice or suggestions to help me work around these problems. One "feature" I find extremely frustrating is the numbering and evaluation order of equations in notebooks. When I edit something early in a notebook, I would like Mathematica to re- evaluate the rest of the notebook, and always perform the notebook evaluation in a straight top-to-bottom order. Is there any way to set an option to get it to behave that way? For things like "%" references to previous results, having the definition of "previous" depend on what you edited last seems crazy. I guess I prefer the Mathcad way, in which evaluation is always in a well-defined order determined by page layout. Another problem is that Mathematica seems to reset plot parameters at random, particularly after erroneous edits. I am using the MultipleListPlot and ListPlot functions to create graphs. After I get the graph sized how I like it (with the mouse), I will sometimes try changing a few parameters in the graph. If I make a typo and Mathematica can't understand the command, my graph will jump to some random different size once I get the error fixed. Finally, I'm about to give up on getting reasonable Legends on my plots. Does the PlotLegend option work for MultipleListPlot? Sometimes it will show a Legend for me, and sometimes it won't. FYI, I'm using Mathematica 3.0 on Linux. -Brett