@tom pearce , e-mails from the "Wolfram U Team" should have the URL of the code blob. I just verified: the e-mail sent at 11AM EDT this (Thursday) morning definitely has the link the code blob. I recommend keeping all e-mails from the "Wolfram U Team" in your e-mail archive.

The e-mail sent out at 5:34 PM EDT today (Thursday) noting that today's video was available for viewing has the URL for the beta version of the interactive framework for the course. All videos and exercises are accessible from that.

I believe that each e-mail from "Wolfram U Team" should have both of these URLs, but each e-mail today was missing one of the links. The links do not change; once you have both of them, you should be fine.

The links that Arben mentioned in the BigMarker presentation are only viewable (and accessible) during the live presentation of the course. AFAICT, they are not available in the replay of the course. But you should be good if you kept the e-mails from "Wolfram U Team" today. That should get you running tonight.

Hi Arben, Thank you for making this introduction to multi-variable classes. I will try my best to attend all classes, but due to work commitments, I am not certain it will always be possible. I hope this is not a problem. I am looking forward to diving deep into the subject matter and making the most of the learning opportunities provided. My best regards, Gleison

I am looking fwd to this class. I've previewed some of the Notebooks and they are awesome. Both for the Calculus and the beautiful examples of Mathematica code. As Gleison said, I too have work commitments at the same time, but I will be catching the recordings when I miss the live classes.

Trivial, but there is a typo in Lesson 3, Exercise 3:

vec1 = {4, 4 - 1};

should be

vec1 = {4, 4, -1};

which requires one change further down:

Graphics[{Red, Arrow[{{0, 0}, vec1}], Blue, 
  Arrow[{{0, 0}, unitVec1}]}]

should be:

Graphics3D[{Red, Arrow[{{0, 0, 0}, vec1}], Blue, 
  Arrow[{{0, 0, 0}, unitVec1}]}]

Phil—I'd heard about CJD in this context but the rest of this was news to me! Very amusing and interesting :).

Hi everybody,

We're hoping to get the permissions issue with our file-sharing service worked out by the end of the day today. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that we've had to go pretty high up in the IT chain on this one.

In the meantime, you can find all of the Lesson and Exercise notebooks at this new link.

See you tomorrow!

EDIT: We've fixed the issue and now the original link should have all of the Lesson and Exercise notebooks—including Aurelius' catch on an early exercise—should be available via the original link. I've thus updated the link above back to the original link.

No problem, Charles. I think as a fellow physicist, you'll find a lot to appreciate here.

The text is vertical. See the pic.

In Lesson 5 Exercises, Exercise 3, Point C should be be {5,2} to complete the parallelogram. Doesn't affect the rest of the calculations since it is not used in the calculations.

Thanks for the follow-up. I tested out a bunch of the lessons and they all open that way---the words are vertical. I wonder if there's a simple setting I can adjust to view them as intended....

By the way, I tried on both Windows 10 and MacOs 11.7.8 (two different computers) and had the same result.

I tried opening the files in Mathematica 11.2 and 10.0 on my PC and in both cases I just got an empty window. Correct file title, but nothing to see. I am working off my MAC with a current version of 13.3 and that opens fine.

Hi Lori—I actually have been getting your first problem myself and had assumed that it was just something in my installation as I have a custom magnification set! Interesting; I'll look into this. And yes, the solution cells for the exercises are meant to be open. You are of course free to try them yourself first.

A little secret useful thing is that if you hold—on a Mac, at least—Option while clicking a cell bracket, it'll select all cells of that type. So you can hold opt, click the cell bracket for any Solution cell, then right click the cell and click "close all subgroups". It will then collapse all of the Solution cells.

Hi Carl—it should be there now. Not sure why it was late; there can be a little variability with BigMarker on occasion.

Coming in Wolfram Language v14.0: graphicsStuff!

Are you testing us? That would have to be big-g GraphicsStuff. :)

Cool, thanks, Arben! [star eyes emoji]

(this message board does not like emojis)

Hi Gerald—could I get confirmation on whether the osculating sphere is just the sphere with the same radius as the osculating circle? Documentation on this seems a little sparse/mixed. (If it isn't, do you have a particular reference which jives with your understanding of it?)

Excellent, thank you. I'll have a look at this and hopefully have some code for you on Monday.

Copious thanks! That you considered this perspective makes this educator beyond happy for all the future nerds who enjoy stretching their brains [triple happy face+nerd emojis]

Arben, It is Fabulous! Thank you so much for your efforts on this!

Dear Arben:

Thanks a lot for all your work. I truly appreciate it over many courses and webinars.

On Lesson 12, Exercise 5, what does it mean "join those regions together?"

Best, Juan Ariel

Several questions about the beta framework for the course:

1. When we do exercises in the framework, where should students be showing/storing our work? In the Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language (EIWL) interactive course -- something that seems rather similar -- each chapter's exercise was a scratch Notebook proper that allowed (actually, required) the entering of WL code to answer the exercises. In this course, the exercise pages don't appear to be interactive Notebooks; I don't see any mechanism for entering any text into the "exercises" notebook in this framework. Unless I'm missing something, the only alternative seems to be to download the exercises notebook and work with the Notebook in my standalone Mathematica app. This seems to defeat the advantages of the entire interactive framework for working through the course; students that are familiar with the EIWL framework will be confused by this interactive course.

2. Will transcripts be provided of the sessions? EIWL provided a "transcripts" tab with a transcript of the presentation (I presume that transcript was generated with one of the transcript-generating AIs out there). This was highly useful in that course; students here (and future students using this interactive course) would benefit from having those transcripts.

3. Now that the interactive course beta has been published, what Notebooks that have been provided via the notebook code dump are not part of that course? AFAICT, the only Notebook which is only provided in the download code blob is the Week 1 review notebooks -- one Notebook so far. Is this a correct presumption: are all the other notebooks of this course included in the online course beta?

Arben: I used to explain the Average Value Theorem with ant farms. Suppose the surface of sand in an ant farm (before ants are put in) is made to conform to a given function. The farm is set on a vibrating plate and the vibration turned on. The sand will gradually flatten out to a depth equal to the average value of the function. I would like to see an animation of that process that can be done for any given (reasonable) function.
Suppose instead that the sand is replaced by a fluid with the surface held in place by a piece of hard plastic conforming to the given function. If the plastic is suddenly removed, the fluid will settle to a level surface. Water would slosh around a lot, but the higher the viscosity, the less sloshing. Could you make an animation of that process for a given function and viscosity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscosity shows something along these lines.
Finally, extend both of these from two to three dimensions as in a fish tank with the surface conforming to a function z = f(x,y).

Hi Phil,

The problem with the separate scratch notebook is that it provides no way to store the student's work in context.

I agree with you. My solution is to copy/paste the exercises into notebooks on my desktop, and then program my solutions/answers into these. Keyboard shortcuts in the desktop version make programming so much faster and these are unavailable in the online framework. In the end, it's easier to retrieve my work on my device, organized to my liking.

For those without access to the desktop version, there is always the Wolfram Cloud: use a free account to create notebooks, save to the desktop, and access with the free Wolfram Player later. It wouldn't take much to have two browser tabs open in a vertically split screen, one with exercises or quizzes, and another with the Wolfram Cloud notebook.

Maybe one of these solutions could work for you. The second option is especially good because it makes every part of these study groups cost nothing to participants. It's so hard to beat.

Hello! Congratulations for this course! I'd like to know if the notebooks of classes are disponible.

In a lecture long past, lesson 4 on the dot product, in the section "dot product of 2 different vectors", I guess that the difference vector u-v points in the wrong direction in the 3D image, it points from u to v, and should point from v to u. In lesson 3 on vectors, in the section "vector subtraction", in the 2D image the vector difference u-v does point in the correct direction, from v to u.

Hi Michael. Could you give me an example of what you're seeing? I think that most things should work well enough in 12, but I don't have a copy installed currently.

Hi Arben,

Happy to be taking part in another study group!

ISSUES:

a. I'm running 13.3.0. on OS X. When the magnification is increased from 50% to 75% or 100%, this error is generated: The magnification does actually increase and the notebook functions fine, it's just annoying.

b. Are the "Solution" cells meant to be set to "open" in the exercise files? This happens with the updated files and I did refresh the files page before re-downloading the files.

There were some errors that were fixed in the update, so that was nice!

Any help would be appreciated.

Lori

This isn't a problem, I just thought it was hilarious. Before I evaluated the code in one of the lesson notebooks, this was the error:

It would be funny if "graphicsStuff" actually became a thing!

Arben, As I suggested in the Q & A, I would like to see an osculating sphere added to the 3D graph under the Unit Binormal Vector section. Does the osculating sphere contain the osculating circle? Do they have the same radius?

In the Lesson 10 exercises notebook in Exercise 2 I notice the word problem states a function of cosines, whereas the solution uses a function of sines.

Regards, John Burgers.

Indeed :). I believe the exercise notebooks which will be deployed to the full course framework will have this change made when the course goes live.

Carl, if you download the latest versions of the notebooks on Amoeba, do you still have this issue?

You should get the link in your reminder emails each day, and it's of course put up in the chat during each course. If the link isn't working for you,

The link to the downloadable code blob should be put up in the chat every day, but it hasn't been posted in the BigMarker chat panel the past 2 days. The only thing posted on the chat page was a link to this discussion page. I don't need the URL, but I noticed that the download URL was missing. I posted a note that it was missing in the BigMarker comments area that pop up after the session. The link for the data blog has been regularly included in the reminder e-mails before the session, and the e-mails noting that each video is available for download.

Indeed, this is what I'm seeing here:

Hi Phil—please see attached :)

You're welcome, of course! Maybe that's how I had intended it, but your comment made me realize that it was a bit unclear, so I'm glad that I could update it.

Hello Arben:

About Problem 4 on Quiz 3, are there more than one correct answer?

Thanks for the eagle-eyed catch, Juan—I've updated the notebook on our side. I'll look into your question about the quiz after today's session as well.

Unlike the simple exercises in EIWL, there is—unfortunate as it may be—a 0% chance that we (or anybody, I think) could write code that would appropriately grade solutions to this type/level of exercise.

You may have misunderstood my question. I noted that EIWL answers are submitted via "exercises", but I wasn't asking for this course to work that way. I was simply asking if the "exercises" tab could each be a scratch notebook. It would be a place to hold work and store each response in context.

The problem with the separate scratch notebook is that it provides no way to store the student's work in context. There is a single scratch notebook for the entire framework; storing any entries one has made in the scratch notebook is problematic. There is no way to work on problems, make notes, and resume the work later.

I presume it would be rather easy to have regions in the "exercises" tab simply be scratch areas to enter WL code of the student's choosing.

One side note: you can say that the auto-grading of exercises in EIWL is rather easy, but I was thoroughly impressed with the code of the grading engine to determine the correctness of answers. Arbitrary code could be submitted. I was thoroughly impressed with the ability of the code to grade responses. I'd sometimes deliberately obfuscate my response; the error was able to ferret out what was happening.

But -- to repeat -- this is NOT what I'm suggesting for this particular course. All I want is a bunch of places in the "exercises" tab for me to enter and interpret my own WL code. Can you see the value in providing those work-spaces? Isn't this easy to do in the framework?

How are the course designers visualizing that students work through the examples in the framework? How did beta testers using the framework go through the examples? If the "scratch" window in the framework is like other interactive courses, I don't see how it can be used to take notes and create a record of working through the problems. What did the beta testers find -- how did they work through this in the framework? How did they use the scratch notebook? Were they able to save their work?

I wouldn't say much of anything is particularly easy to do in the framework :').

You noted: that the difficulty in imitating what the EIWL course did was auto-grading. Don't auto-grade. Simply providing an interpreter in the exercises window should be easy.

I just can't quite visualize how we're supposed to generate organized notes as we work through the exercises. I don't see how this course framework provides any way to do that. That's why I'm curious how the beta testers used the framework in their testing. Working through the course in a standalone Mathematica notebooks isn't bad, but it doesn't seem to gybe with the intent of an interactive course. To use a metaphor, it's a bit of an impedance mismatch.

...and that's excluding any responsiveness issues that might arise from having users not only typing into notebooks with complex 3D graphics and Manipulates and so on, but trying to generate their own such objects and save them to their own cloud copies of the notebooks.

Auto-grader aside, the EIWL exercises run through a rather thorough repertoire of things in their course. I rapidly got in the habit of using the exercise window for scratch code, and I wasn't shy about how I used it. I thought it was a rocking good way to have all of the coursework in one place.

Wouldn't the hypothetical problems you describe also apply to the scratch notebook in the framework? How in general did the course designers intend for students to use the framework? Did they want everyone to do all their work in the framework? Were the beta testers able to do that?

Hi Tom—it's in the same place for all DSGs, at the top of the chat panel in a light cyan color. You can see it explicitly circled in red in the screenshot within this thread.

Maybe one of these solutions could work for you. The second option is especially good because it makes every part of these study groups cost nothing to participants. It's so hard to beat.

The "for you" is not my focus. I'm asking how a Man from Mars would use the course and work the exercises. How would someone relatively new to the Mathematica app, the Wolfram Cloud, etc., figure out how to use the tools. If the framework is designed so that a [relative] newbie can work the course, it will be just fine for me.

For those without access to the desktop version, there is always the Wolfram Cloud: use a free account to create notebooks, save to the desktop, and access with the free Wolfram Player later.

Alternatively, I could work in the scratch notebook in the framework and save that notebook to my Cloud account. I hadn't thought about archiving the scratch-area that way. That is my point: some newbie -- some Man from Mars -- is not going to figure out how to do that in the course. To have a fighting chance, the framework would have to support it. That's why I was curious what the internal beta-testers speculated/noted on how students would manage the workflow of the exercises and quizzes.

As an aside, the "Man from Mars" reference is from the novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961): a person who grew up on Mars absent from any humans returns as an adult to Earth; he is completely disoriented by many things he sees. The question of how a Man from Mars would cope with something was an idiom in certain circles for many years; I suspect that has waned in recent years, but it seemed perfect in this context.

all good, thanks for taking the time with the explanation

Adding a bit to the file ...

Attachments:

Average Values o...pdf

Yes, they are "available" ;-)

Agreed - I was just about to post the same bug

This is corrected on our end; it may just not be deployed to the framework yet.

Hi Lori—yes, if you could please email wolfram-u at wolfram dot com (very effective spam filter technique here, I'm sure) about this, that would be helpful. I can't quite see how this is happening, so more info would be good. Thanks!