Mike Hurley's pages Sun. Dec 22 2024   223 Hurley Math CWRU

Other sources of help

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• Information about Mathematica commands and their syntax can be accessed using Mathematica's built-in help.

• Wolfram Research, Inc. (developer of Mathematica) provides an online support library.

• The Mathematica book.

• Other books

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Mathematica's Built-in Help

Mathematica has a fairly extensive built-in help system

• If you know the name of a command, you can get information by typing it into a Mathematica notebook, selecting the text, and choosing "Find selected function" from the help menu.

• If you know the exact name of a command, (for example, Integrate) you enter a command made up of a question mark followed by the command name (no space) (e.g., ?Integrate) and press "Enter"; Mathematica responds with a short description of the command, including the syntax for its use. Using a double question mark ( ??Integrate) gives you some extra information in addition to that returned by the single question mark version.

• If you are uncertain of the spelling of the command, you may use the wild card "*"; for example, typing ?Int* returns a list of all Mathematica commands that begin with "Int" (which includes Integer, Integrate, Intersection and others). You may also use "*" as a typing shortcut; ?Integr* works the same as ?Integrate since Integrate is the only Mathematica command beginning with "Integr".

• there are also Help items built into Mathematica's menu structure; these vary with the type of computer being used.

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MathSource by W.R.I.

The makers of Mathematica maintain a support library containing lots of information about Mathematica.

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The Mathematica book

The main reference book for using Mathematica is entitled "Mathematica: A system for doing Mathematics by Computer", by Stephen Wolfram, published by Addison-Wesley. It is a reference guide, not a tutorial in how to learn to use Mathematica. Especially useful is the Appendix which lists all of the built-in commands.

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Other books about Mathematica

Search the CWRU library on-line catalog by subject (or by words in title) for Mathematica.

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