A Wolfram U Daily Study Group previewing our upcoming Introduction to Multivariable Calculus course begins on Monday, September 11, 2023.
Join me and a cohort of fellow enthusiasts to learn multivariable calculus from the ground up. Learn how to use Wolfram Language to understand and visualize vectors, dot and cross products, curves, surfaces and the differential and integral calculus that can be done once free from the confines of “the x-axis.” The three-week span of this study group will allow a large number of topics to be covered, including vector operations, multivariable and vector functions, gradients, coordinate transformations, line integrals and the “three great theorems” that come out of multivariable vector calculus.
The Introduction to Multivariable Calculus interactive course will soon be added to the Wolfram U catalog, and this Study Group offers early access to course lessons and resources. You will be able to participate in live Q&A, review your understanding through interactive in-session polls and even complete quizzes at the end of the study group to get a certificate of program completion.
This Study Group runs September 11–29, 2023, 11am-12pm CT (4-5pm GMT).
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
It’s no problem at all! You will receive recordings of each day’s lectures and will—later in the study group—have early access to the course framework, i.e. videos + lesson notebooks + quizzes + exercises.
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.
Re: the discussion of handedness in Monday’s presentation, the handedness of physical objects is one of my favorite science topics. Physics/engineering students are aware of the use of the right-hand rule to visualize moving charged particles, current in a wire, and the associated magnetic fields. Handedness also plays a huge role in chemistry. Flipping the handedness of every molecule and structure in the human body would have a huge impact on the function of the human. Roger Zelazny speculates about such a flipping in a delightful little novel Doorways in the Sand. The quick read may be at a local library, or it could even be found online as a PDF.
CJD in the 1980s was related to wrong-handed molecules altering the structure of proteins in the brain; the Red Cross used to have screening questions about “Mad Cow Disease”. Fortunately, this disease appears to have disappeared.
Turnbuckles have left-handed threading on one end of the bolt and right-handed threading on the other end. There must be distinct nuts with the two threadings to secure the tension. Polymath and tensegrity-maker Gerald de Jong has created a Turnbuckle Tensegrity: he figured out how to 3DP struts and nuts with both threadings. Gerald mentioned this model on social media, but he hasn’t published anything about it on his website yet. Almost all turnbucles used in the world (e.g., screen door diagonal lines, container ship lashings, etc.) are at tension. Gerald’s tensegrity-struts are in compression. Only those who pay excessive attention to turnbuckles would notice this structural pun.
The most famous left-hand screw is MIT’s Big Screw award a penny-a-vote contest awarded to an instructor who did some “bad” thing to his/her/their students in the spring term. It is a massive screw with left-hand threading. The story of this winner is here):
Math Professor AP Mattuck apparently won the award twice; I know nothing about the circumstances. Perhaps he was teaching multivariable calculus one of those times…
I’m glad that you think so, Carl! I think the addition of the exercises will round things out and help you to start making beautiful visualizations like you see in the course on your own. (Though of course, basically every visualization in both the lessons and exercises has its code included in the notebook, and that alone is very useful!)
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.
Hello! I currently use Mathematica 12. The .nb files open in 12 but they are not looking good/useful. Any way to fix this aside from upgrading straight away?
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, Michael. I’m running Mathematica 12.2, and I’m having no problem using the notebooks of this course. I’ve never having any issue downloading/running notebooks from Wolfram Research. I suspect your problem is not related to the version of Mathematica you’re running.
I do get “Why the bleep” warnings – a warning that I’m running an earlier version of Mathematica that the notebooks were saved in. I just ignore that error and use the notebook:
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.
Michael, I might have to direct you to our tech support, but I’m curious whether this happens with the other notebooks as well. You say “files”; does that mean that the other lessons so far have all opened like this? Do the later notebooks do the same?
