https://community.wolfram.com RSS Feed for Wolfram Community showing questions tagged with Mathematica sorted by most likes. https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/181759 I was wondering, it would be interesting to try to use the community as a way to request new functions that could be incorporated into new versions of Wolfram Language, in a colaborative way. Sometimes users simply don't have the whole/deeper system view, to understand that the requested function is or too specific, too broad or already implemented, but I believe that another times we can have a nice insights, that Wolfram Research people haven't yet, or that do not have received much attention  yet.  To the idea is: [b]Post your's requested Function as a answer to this question, and let's upvotes show the more interesting ones![/b] Some rules 1- One Post per function (or class of function), you can have more than one request. 2- Exemplify your function use. Rodrigo Murta 2014-01-08T09:14:19Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2267653 *MODERATORS' NOTE: We will be displaying the collage of people's images at the top of this discussion. Dear all, please, do post the images of Wolfram things dear to your memories here :-) Thank you, Daniel Carvalho, for a delightful question!* ![enter image description here][1] ---------- Today installing Mathematica 12.3 I notes that there are previous versions installed too in my Linux box: daniel@home:/opt/Wolfram/Mathematica$ ls -l total 28 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 nov 20 2014 10.0 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 ago 14 2016 11.0 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 abr 26 2017 11.1 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 jun 26 2020 12.1 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 jan 12 23:20 12.2 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 mai 13 13:23 12.3 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 ago 19 2013 9.0.1 It is interesting to see that the older version is around 9 in 2013, and the years of installation for the other releases, according my folders. In fact my first version of Mathematica was 4.0 (1999), for calculus classes in college. In Computer Engineering that time we had 5 semesters of calculus classes, and just the last one we went to the lab to make some more interesting projects applying the theory to practical experiments. The basic calculus classes usually ware just whiteboard, pen and paper, book and exercises. A very traditional engineering college. It was interesting getting the last exercises from lists, the most complex cases, and have it solved immediately!! I can recall that version 6.0 was the most interesting for me, I have used it at master degree. Since version 6.0 I have been publishing lots of [Demonstrations][2] with the [Manipulate][3] function, it is really fun! It got my playing video game timing! :-) In my parents house I found this boxes with my old college stuff: ![enter image description here][4] I went to the Wolfram Summer School in [2007][5] while back in college for the Master in Electrical Engineering, and latter again in [2011][6] for a new research about [NKS][7] computational principles. Latter on I get certified, [Wolfram Certified Instructor][8] Since 2013 I have been organizing the Wofram conference in Brazil with [Mackenzie University][9] team and other friends, by my installations dates, I have used 9.0.1 at the first conference here. In 2021 and 2020 the conf is virtual for safety (remote): [https://www.wolfram.com/events/virtual-conference-br/2020/][10] And now I am very excited with 12.3!! The Mathematica versions history is available at: [https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/quick-revision-history.html][11] What was your first Mathematica version?? [at0]: https://community.wolfram.com/web/danielscarvalho [Original]: https://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=Eew570TWkBEyea5.jpeg&userId=1518234 [1]: https://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=colmv.jpeg&userId=11733 [2]: https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/author.html?author=Daniel%20de%20Souza%20Carvalho [3]: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Manipulate.html [4]: https://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=Eew570TWkBEyea5.jpeg&userId=20103 [5]: https://education.wolfram.com/summer-school/alumni/2007/carvalho/ [6]: https://education.wolfram.com/summer-school/alumni/2011/carvalho/ [7]: https://www.wolframscience.com/ [8]: https://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-u/instructors/carvalho.html [9]: https://www.mackenzie.br/ [10]: https://www.wolfram.com/events/virtual-conference-br/2020/ [11]: https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/quick-revision-history.html Daniel Carvalho 2021-05-13T16:49:32Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2253852 I realize that I am possibly the only Mathematica user to suffer from existential angst for the product, but still, its worth pausing to ask the question, what is Mathematica for? Meaning, what is its purpose? But for those of you pragmatists tempted to roll your eyes and just get on with using it, let me motivate the question with a chart: ![enter image description here][1] You don't need a model to figure out the long term trend in that time series. And someone, somewhere, in WR needs to be asking the question I am posing in this post, if they are seriously hoping to check that trend and reverse it. Now, let's be fair here. Firstly this is not just a Mathematica issue. For example, here's the comparable chart for Matlab: ![enter image description here][2] So I am not "picking on" Mathematica. Its a general problem for mathematical programming languages. Or perhaps I should say, more accurately, its a challenge for proprietary mathematical programming languages: ![enter image description here][3] Now this "analysis" is of course over-simplistic. It could be, for example, that the downward trend in Mathematica interest is a reflection of a decision by WR to increase prices over time, to maximize profits, i.e. it could conceivably be a *good* thing. But I rather suspect otherwise and instead tend to believe that Mathematica is losing influence and relevance, regardless of whatever I may think of the product. Another response might be: "Of course we are losing market share to license-free, direct competitor products. What's your point?". To which, I suppose, the answer might be: "Are you quite sure that is inevitable? Are there not examples of for-profit products that are so good they are able to maintain market share in the face of cost-free alternatives?". The answer to that question is, of course, yes. But in order to maintain your competitive position you have to be crystal clear in your understanding of what the value proposition is, and why customers will (continue to) pay for your product. Which brings me to the subject of this post: what is Mathematica for? Because unless can answer that question, you can't answer the earlier one. Now I have a theory that the generally held view in WR is that Mathematica is for any kind of programming task you can conceive of. It's a general purpose tool, limited in its capabilities only by your imagination. And at this point we could now queue up a 15 minute informercial featuring examples of applications from Astronomy to Zoology. But just because you *can* do something in Mathematica doesn't mean you should: there are often better alternatives. Mathematica has developed into something like a Swiss Army knife, a general purpose tool you can use for almost any purpose. But, often times what you need is a tool with a specific purpose, like a screwdriver, which will make it much easier to complete the task you have in mind. Let's take a simple example: spreadsheets. I have seen several attempts to get Mathematica to do the kind of thing that Excel can do effortlessly. And the question I always end up asking myself is: "why on God's green earth would anyone in their right mind try to use Mathematica for a task like that?". What is trivial to accomplish in a few seconds or minutes in Excel, typically takes hours of jumping through hoops with Mathematica to achieve a result that is almost always inferior. It's like trying to navigate a freeway in a spaceship, rather than a motor car. Sure, you can do it, buy why?? Another no-no is trying to develop stand-alone software applications in Mathematica. It's extremely hard to do - typically much tougher then using a language designed for that purpose. On the other hand, there are some things that Mathematica excels at, such as: - Mathematics/symbolic logic/symbolic manipulation: superb. Best of breed. - Graphics (including animation) ditto - Documentation. Also superb. Now as good at Matlab, possibly even superior. After that, you could pick a bunch of different application areas in which Mathematica is great. But best of breed? I dont know. Let's take an area I know a little about: time series analysis. prior to 2010, Mathematica was truly awful at handling time series. Basically it didn't. Gradually, over subsequent releases, Mathematica has made enormous strides in this area to the point where it is truly magnificent. For which someone at WL deserves (and I hope has received), several promotions. But despite this, Mathematica is still not best of breed in this area. Why? Because, unaccountably, it is still missing several vital elements of functionality such as Granger causality/ Cointegration and its implementation of important functionality like the Kalman Filter is horribly unintuitive. This shows two things: (i) it is possible for WR to make Mathematica outstanding in almost any area it chooses to. it's just a question of focus. And (ii) to become best of breed, you need to finish the job! By which I mean, provide something close to 99% of the functionality that a professional practitioner in that area would expect to have available. if it chose to, WR could accomplish that in the time series area in a single release, I would guess. The problem, I am suggesting, is that in trying to make Mathematica a product that is "all things to all men", it fails to achieve the status of being indispensable to practitioners in a more limited subset of subject areas. Ok let's go with this conjecture for a moment. Let's wave a magic wand and imagine that we can change Stephen Wolfram's vision about his flagship product, which he has sweated blood over for the last 20-30 years (in other words, this is never going to happen - but its still fun to play the game). What core capabilities would you have WR focus on with the aim of making Mathematica an indispensable product in that area? Here are my choices: (i) Time series & econometrics. Mathematica is so close: just finish the job - it's a no-brainer! (ii) Machine learning. This also means making sure that the GPU capability works as it should, first time and every time. Mathematica still has a way to go here and its a huge area. But I'm sure WR could do it. (iii). Meta-Programming. This one is a BIG stretch. But it just happens that WL may have a huge potential competitive advantage, because the language is itself *computational*. in other words, the building blocks of the language can themselves be manipulated, which is exactly what you need for meta-programming. Try doing that in Python! On this subject I would say that the starting point would be to create WL functionality capable of generating a single line of WL code that is sufficiently complex and interesting to win the Wolfram One-Liner competition. I realize that's a huge challenge and its not just about the difficulty of navigating the terrain of the Wolfram language. It also involves thinking about what "complex" and "interesting" mean, in this context. Think of this as a Turing test, for Metaprogramming capability. Once it's passed, it would open up a floodgate of possibilities, both for WL aficionados but also, critically, for those who don't program in WL, or indeed in any language at all. For reference, check out whats going on in the world of "no -code" application environments. [1]: https://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=GoogleTrendsMathematica.png&userId=773999 [2]: https://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=GoogleTrendsMatlab.png&userId=773999 [3]: https://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=GoogletrendsPython.png&userId=773999 Jonathan Kinlay 2021-04-26T16:09:01Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/774416 I originally posted this on Stack Exchange, where it was suggested it would more appropriately be posted here. The only "real-world" application that meets the specified criteria offered so far (twice) has been Wolfram Alpha (I am not entirely sure that it meets the second criterion - would you choose to develop WA in WL, if you didn't have a bunch of WL experts and a WL development platform at your disposal?). In any event, I am interested in hearing about other real-life applications.... I have a theory, which I am in the process of writing about in a blog post, that other than in applications in mathematics (symbolic logic), Mathematica's primary usefulness is in encouraging a kind of intellectual dilettantism. (Of course, one man's dilettantism is another man's New Kind of Science: i.e. the speculative endeavors of a fertile, creative intellect might readily be mistaken for actual (scientific) achievement by less agile minds.) I don't want this conjecture to be true: I'm as much a buyer of the hype around Mathematica as the next man. But I have noticed that, in practice, Mathematica somehow fails to live up to its apparently unlimited potential for encapsulating creative thought-product across an almost unlimited span of human intellectual endeavor. In my own work in finance, for instance, it has generally proved much less useful than other products such as Matlab. And, in general, when I look at the examples cited by Wolfram in its "customer stories", my reaction to many of them is: "Sure, you can use Mathematica to do that. But why would you, when there are much better alternatives available?". To take one such customer story from the field of 3D CAD, I don't understand why anyone would *prefer* to use Mathematica for such a task, rather than a specialist product like Solidworks. I am aware of applications where the use of Mathematica is fully justified. In my own work, I have used Mathematica to price complex derivatives products, a field in which it excels. Likewise, I am somewhat familiar with Phil Zecker's work at EQA Partners, where he produced an outstanding risk management solution using Mathematica. In both these cases, however, there is no standard, specialized alternative offering in the field of risk management, as there are, for example, in engineering, CAD, app design, or music. In these areas, it seems to me, Mathematica is like a Swiss Army Knife: sure you can use it to dabble in almost anything; but I have screwdrivers, knives and corkscrews that do a better job for their specific purpose. In any event I am looking for counter-examples of real-world applications to refute my hypothesis about Mathematica. By "real-world" I mean specifically applications in which: (i) money changed hands (e.g. a commercial product was sold, or consulting fee earned) ; and (ii) an alternative solution was considered and Mathematica preferred for specific reasons ("it was the only software we could afford or that was available to tackle the job", is not a valid reason to qualify the application as real-world, according to this definition) Jonathan Kinlay 2016-01-17T16:05:55Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/288532 I am doing some project planning that could use the CDF Player and CDF technology as a means of distributing a mathematical model to reviewers. However, I've noticed that the documentation for 9 is really for 8. There have been some indications that 10 is coming out with no changes to the documentation since version 8. There is no File | New | CDF (Free or Pro) is 9. The latest CDFs in CDF-Examples are from 2012. This raises a red flag that CDFs are no longer mainstream. Ideally we would like to use a technology that is supported and will stay current with Windows and Apple OS versions. I see that there is a CDF Export and Preview under the File menu. Some of the questions I will be asked by management are: 1. Is CDF considered a legacy technology? If not, will it be available in 10 and future versions - is there a roadmap that can be referenced? 2. If CDF is considered legacy, when do support options expire? 3. Are there any replacements planned from Wolfram that are functionally equivalent to CDFs? If so what are they? 4. What are runtime licensing considerations that should be honored if we use C and C++ as a front-end? CDFs offer an attractive solution - I love what I am seeing in the CDF-Examples - but before committing to CDFs we need to know that this technology is on-going and will stay current with Mathematica and operating systems. Doug Kimzey 2014-07-06T14:44:27Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/1096129 Can somebody give a succinct comparison of the features of the various products: Mathematica, Mathematica Online, Wolfram|One, Wolfram Development Platform, Wolfram Cloud, Wolfram Data Drop. I find differentiating so many similar products — especially those manifestly cloud-based — rather confusing. Murray Eisenberg 2017-05-16T18:35:44Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2103748 My 14-year-old son is medically complex, including being a quadriplegic. He currently uses software (Grid 3) to communicate ideas and an eye tracker (Tobii) with software that allows him to "type" using his eyes. I am looking for tools that will allow him to work out a math problem through its various steps (since he cannot hold a pencil and write on paper to show his work), and I thought Mathematica might be a tool that could help. Has anybody successfully used Mathematica using mouse movements alone and not typing anything on the keyboard? Thanks. Myles Dear 2020-10-28T18:37:55Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/291822 Is Wolfram Workbench going to be updated to work well with Mathematica 10 and the new syntaxes and operators introduced (`<| ... |>`, `@*` and `/*`)? Szabolcs Horvát 2014-07-11T22:29:14Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/71162 As most followers of online Mathematica fora will have noticed, one of the all-time hottest desired features of Mathematica is the Multiple Undo feature. While working in a notebook it is possible to irrecoverably lose all of your work with just a click and a few key presses. In a discussion I had with John Fultz during the 2011 WTC, John sketched the difficulty of returning to a previous executional state. However, while going back in state would be a very nice feature to have, this is much, much more than most users desire. I guess most of us would be very pleased if we could undo *manual* changes to *input cells only* for a reasonable number of steps, say 10. I know of many people who would be willing to give up all the goodies that v10 may bring if they only could get a simple text-based multiple undo. The question is whether WRI is sufficiently aware of the wishes of its user community in this context and whether the apparent overstatement of the Undo functionality in terms of execution state may stand in the way of the implementation of a much simpler version that would satisfy the basic needs? Sjoerd de Vries 2013-07-24T13:49:04Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/291612 Since about Version 6 it has taken longer and longer to start up Mathematica. In Version 10 on my HP Pavilion HPE Series it takes a little over a minute. Is this common experience? Is there some way to decrease this time? Does it have any thing to do with virus checking? I guess that one possible solution is to just leave the Mathematica FrontEnd open all the time, say by keeping the Documentation Center open but minimized. David J M Park Jr 2014-07-11T19:45:42Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2380163 I recently noticed that Mathematica uses MxNet as the backend for neural networks. It seems to have been integrated in 2015. The blog post listing the rationale is [here](https://www.oreilly.com/content/apache-mxnet-in-the-wolfram-language/). MxNet seems to have not gained the momentum to become popular, you can see the [trends](https://paperswithcode.com/trends) from "papers with code". Lack of popularity means framework may be slow to develop. For instance, this [question](https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/256323/neural-network-automatic-differentiation-autograd) about using neural networks to fit ODEs from Joshua Schrier. It requires underlying framework to support higher order gradients. There's an [issue](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/10002) to add support in MxNET but progress has stalled. Meanwhile PyTorch/TensorFlow/JAX support this feature. Yaroslav Bulatov 2021-10-06T00:49:07Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2118125 Are there any benchmarks yet for Mathematica 12.1 on the new (13") M1 MacBook Air or (13") M1 MacBook Pro? Murray Eisenberg 2020-11-18T20:19:23Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2152918 My question is based on the observation that when a new Mathematica version is released (this time being 12.2) some of the functions that don't even receive an update from the previous version often get broken. How is it so that the examples in the documentation are not checked for consistency of operation/results before a new Mathematica version is shipped? I believe that even with a team of 5-6 people in the quality control department (assuming there is any) it is possible to check the examples for all listed functions in Mathematica in about a week. Why is such a simple task and simple expectation so hard to meet? The issue at the end is that a buggy release will cause many of the mission critical functions for say an end user to break. It is a pity that I have to install not one version (that I can fully trust) but keep four versions of Mathematica (11.3, 12.0,12.1 and 12.2) simultaneously (grabbing over 50 GB). Reason: because some things work in one version and the others in another version. Please do enlighten me how hard are the user expectations to be met. We do not want more and more functions; we just want the functions to work reliably and correctly. There seems to be issues with the quality control here that needs to be sorted before releasing future versions. Take this simple example: ReplacePixelValue did not receive any update since 2014 (version 10). Then how come the second example in its documentation (in the "Applications" subsection) cease to function properly. Furthermore, I am attaching a notebook with another example for this particular function to demonstrate that something that works perfectly in 12.0 and 12.1 fails in the 12.2 release. &[Wolfram Notebook][1] [1]: https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/1cb0dbd1-e7cb-48cf-abd1-1324cf87e89e Ali Hashmi 2021-01-02T15:53:14Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/413906 In discussions with several university physics professors,,,theoreticians...they profess a strong dislike for Mathematica and caution their students about using it. I can fully understand cautioning a user to make sure they have used the correct syntax or correctly formulated a problem or model, but their caution was stronger than that. They, in effect, prefer to roll their own algorithms. They also claim Mathematica gives bad results, though it was unclear whether the fault lay in the execution or the formulation of a problem. I am troubled by this attitude, since users in all technical disciplines use Mathematica and rely on it to supply solutions to various designs, models, and analyses, some that are mission critical. I performed a literature search on evaluation of Mathematica and the most recent published critique and evaluation I found was for Mathematica 5. Other than this, there does not appear to be an undercurrent of suspicion except from these specific profs. What is going on? I can defend my mathematical models but I cannot defend the outcomes of executions of these models if there is skepticism over the validity of solutions obtained by Mathematica. I can also understand that anyone who has not come up on the learning curve might simply be covering their own inadequacies, hence the attitude of rolling their own. However, everyone should be skeptical of published results from the use of personal algorithms, for which no validation or user community exists. How can the quality of the results from the use of Mathmatica be supported? Are there published evaluations? What might some organizations such as DARPA do to validate some work for which Mathematica has been a cornerstone of the analyses? Or am I the only person to have run into this level of skepticism...which is ironic since I am more skeptical of analytical results than most. Luther Nayhm 2014-12-30T15:36:06Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/158408 Why was the Wofram Language developed to run on a Raspberry-Pi rather than a tablet or a smartphone? wouldn't it make more sense to create a Wolfram Language app for a mainstream mobile computng platform that has its own screen? can i even use a Raspberry-Pi without connecting it to a monitor and if not, why would i want to run WL on a Raspberry-Pi rather than on a laptop? does running WL or Mathematica on a Raspberry-Pi have any advantage  over running it on a laptop? Richard Gaylord 2013-11-22T09:47:10Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/398294 To my surprise I realized Mathematica doesn't have a proper debugger -> I can write only toy small programs without an easy way to debug the code I searched The internet and I found Workbench tool ....which is not free !!! How am I supposed to use the tool in the first place if I cannot develop any decent size program? Is this a bad joke ? Bogd Timo 2014-11-28T21:15:26Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2113522 With even the new MacMini being equipped with a GPU for neural computing, to use Apples marketing spiel, and able to run TensorFlow models what is the likelihood of Mathematica allowing access the M1's GPU any time soon? With a good bit of pulling the hair out of my head I've just managed to configure a MacPro 4,1 with an NVIDIA CUDA capable GPU to run Mathematica Deep Learning code and I'm well impressed. It easily outperforms my much newer MacMini. So I'm gagging to see what performance the M1 will provide. Nicholas Walton 2020-11-12T17:45:41Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/150271 In the [url=http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/BSplineCurve.html]BSplineCurve documentation[/url], under applications / interpolation, instructions for making an open curve going through points is given.  Similar code is in the Demonstration [url=http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/KnotVectorGenerationForBSplineInterpolation/]Knot Vector Generation for B-Spline Interpolation[/url].  It also does open curves.  I'd like something similar for closed curves.  Given 16 or so points, generate a smooth closed curve going through those points.   I'm hoping to make a new Demonstration on the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscribed_square_problem]Inscribed square problem[/url]. The conjecture is that every closed curve has an embedded square.  My idea is to randomly generate the points of 4 squares, do a Traveling Salesman on those points, then draw the interpolated spline through the 16 points. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscribed_square_problem][img=width: 441px; height: 480px;]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Inscribed_square.svg/441px-Inscribed_square.svg.png[/img][/url] Ed Pegg 2013-11-07T18:49:20Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/817719 Dear All, I have a simple scene with some (non-transparent) cubes: ![enter image description here][1] While this motion was relatively fluent (10-20 fps I estimate) in version 10.1, 10.2, 10.3., 10.3.1, it is roughly 0.3 fps for me in version 10.4. Can someone else confirm this behavior? I've tried some of the different rendering engines to no avail. I've attached the notebook. I'm working on El Capitan with a Macbook pro Retina. [1]: http://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=ScreenShot2016-03-04at14.27.04.png&userId=73716 Sander Huisman 2016-03-04T13:34:50Z https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2112731 Has anyone tested Mathematica 12.1 on the new Mac OS? Is it safe to upgrade to Mac OS 11 yet? Erik Mahieu 2020-11-11T16:38:00Z