A General Overview of Mathematica

Standard disclaimers apply!

Mathematica is an interactive system for doing mathematical computation. It handles numerical, graphic, and symbolic calculations, and it incorporates a high-level programming language which allows the user to define his own procedures.

Program Functionality: Good

Breadth of Functionality: Excellent

Mathematica has hundreds of functions available. A large core collection is loaded at startup, and specialized packages are available for many topics, from statistics to geometry. Mathematica also has a wide variety of specialized packages written by users and available from the electronic library, MathSource, maintained by the vendor.

Reliability and Robustness: Fair

Mathematica has fewer bugs as time goes on, generally. However, no computer program can replace understanding! People do mathematics, computers don't.

State of the Art: Excellent

Mathematica is one of the leading mathematics programs, noted for its outstanding graphics and its pattern-matching language.

User Friendliness: Fair

Mathematica's language, command names and syntax are mostly straightforward, and easily understood by anyone proficient in C and Perl, but Mathematica requires a major investment in training before the program can be easily used.

Help Resources: Good

Network-based help: Fair

The UITS Knowledge Base has answers to several frequently asked Mathematica questions. In addition, Wolfram Research provides some technical FAQs on its web site.

Program Help System: Good

For information on a topic, enter ? <topic> -- for example, ?NIntegrate returns

     NIntegrate[f, {x, xmin, xmax}] gives a numerical approximation to
     the integral of f with respect to x over the interval xmin to xmax.

For a bit more information, enter ??<topic>. The name of the topic must be known, and spelled correctly: for example, ?plot returns an error message -- ?Plot is needed, and no hint about the problem is offered. However, the menu at the top contains a choice, Help, which brings down a list containing Help, which brings up a Help Browser, with up to four levels of detail [for example Graphics and Sound, 2D Plots, Plot], and also access to The Mathematica Book, 600 Mb of documentation.

Local Availability: Fair

Mathematica is classified by UITS as Special Purpose software. See the Software Availability Matrix for details about where Mathematica is installed.

Local Support & Training: Minimal

Document Availability: Fair

UITS makes full documentation is available for reference via short term loan from various locations. Documents are also available for reference at the UITS Stat/Math Center.

Training Availability: None

User Goup: None

UITS Consulting Support: Full Support

The UITS Center for Statistical and Mathematical Computing (call 812/855-4724 or send email to statmath@indiana.edu) can answer basic to advanced questions about the use of Mathematica.

Note: If you are a student using Mathematica for a class exercise, questions about your class work should be first directed to your instructors.

Other Consulting Support: Minimal

Anyone using Mathematica licenses belonging to UITS must obtain support through the UITS Stat/Math Center; such users are not eligible for technical support from Wolfram Research, and they have been known to refuse it.

Registered Mathematica license owners may contact the vendor directly, with the license number provided with their license agreement: phone 217-398-6500 [there is no toll-free support number], or send e-mail to support@wri.com.

WRI Technical Support states that students with the student edition will not receive technical support beyond help with installation.