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Re: Does Mathematica really need more printed, introductory

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg88706] Re: Does Mathematica really need more printed, introductory
  • From: "ahallam at iastate.edu" <ahallam at iastate.edu>
  • Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 07:10:19 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <fuhfdc$ihb$1@smc.vnet.net> <fuhrka$s88$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Apr 30, 3:27 am, AES <sieg... at stanford.edu> wrote:
> In article <fv6uhs$rk... at smc.vnet.net>,
>  Andrzej Kozlowski <a... at mimuw.edu.pl> wrote:
>
> > Is it really "reality based" to be comparing books about Adobe
> > Illustrator (all versions going as far back as 2003) with books only
> > about version 6 of Mathematica ? Sounds to me more like a reflection
> > in a distorting mirror masquerading as "reality"  (something
> > unfortunately very common these days in the media and in large
> > sections of the Academia).
>
>       Andrzej, it's Wolfram itself has portrayed version 6
>       as a massive and major upgrade --- "Wolfram reinvents
>       Mathematica!" --- "500 major new features" --- "a
>       revolutionary new version" --- which also involves
>       significant features of previous versions being
>       removed, replaced, or changed in major ways.
>
>       And of the 12 Illustrator manuals I listed, nine of them have
>       publication dates in 2007 and are (or at least claim to be)
>       updated for Illustrator's current versions as of those dates
>       --- for a product whose upgrades have been, I think it's fair
>       to say, much more gradual and evolutionary in character
>       than Mathematica's v5 to v6 upgrade.
>
>       I included the three items from 2006, 2005 and 2003 only
>       for historical interest, since they apparently hadn't --- yet,
>       anyway --- been updated.  I think my amazon search on the
>       string "Adobe Illustrator" actually brought up something
>       over 2000 hits (though of course there have nowhere that
>       many actual earlier books).
>
>       Beyond these facts, I think I'll let the remainder of your
>       comments speak for themselves.
>
> > Why don't you perform a search for books about Mathematica (all
> > versions) and compare your findings with your list of books about
> > Illustrator? The picture will become very different and much closer to
> > "reality". The fact is, that the vast majority of essential features
> > of Mathematica are described in these earlier versions and that any
> > one who has mastered them should be able to update his knowledge to
> > version 6 without a huge extra effort.
>
> > As I already expained earlier: I would not buy any printed "manual
> > style" book about Mathematica and I remain highly skeptical that such
> > a book would be successful enough to justify the effort of writing it.
> > However, this only one person's view based on mere speculation.
> > However, I am (of course) very interested in any books *applying* the
> > new features of Mathematica 6, but that is an entirely different matter.
>
> > Andrzej Kozlowski



For what it's worth, the following book was written using Mathematica
6 and uses Mathematica 6 examples.

Dynamical Systems with Applications using Mathematica

It is available at Amazon.




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