Re: total newbie
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg111045] Re: total newbie
- From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
- Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:04:14 -0400 (EDT)
On 7/17/10 at 8:15 AM, kellrobinson at yahoo.com (Michael Robinson) wrote: >I downloaded mathematica tonight so I can do an assignment. I have >to modify a file our teacher posted on the class website, solve some >equations and generate a curve... okay, this file ends in the >extension nb. I need to know how to make the commands in the file >execute. >Now don't laugh. I put the cursor at the end of the line (for >example a ParametricPlot command) and hit enter. I get a carriage >return. To get Mathematica to execute commands use shift-return rather than just return. If you are going to have any success at all with Mathematica, you should at a minimum go to the Help menu select Virtual Book and read the introductory material. You can access that by clicking on arrows to the left of headings in the window you see until you get to specific articles. The articles can be read by clicking on them which will open them in a separate window. One of the nice aspects of the Virtual Book is the windows that open are Mathematica notebooks which means you can execute any of the commands to get a result. Further, you can edit the parameters and re-execute the command to see how it changes the output. And since any changes you make to these documentation notebooks won't be saved, you can change things without fear of messing up the documentation.