ABSTRACT

Mathematica is a very powerful tool. It performs computations that use algebra and calculus for symbolic calculation and data manipulation, and includes special functions and sophisticated numerical algorithms. The best way to learn a program like Mathematica is to just dive into it. Start up Mathematica however it's done on physicists’ computer. Commands may be executed one by one, or the whole notebook can be executed sequentially, using the drop-down menu. A cell may contain commands, output, lines of text for documentation, or other entities. Physicists can suppress output of any Mathematica line by ending it with a semicolon, that is makes the same assignment but does not provide the output. Mathematica will indent things so that they are easily understood. Most commands in Mathematica end up creating new quantities, and Mathematica remembers these throughout a session. There is plenty of documentation on Mathematica, both online and within the program itself.