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Any of you guys mind sharing your experiences and use cases for Mathematica? I have yet to see someone using it in the wild.

ocschwar 5y ago
My master's thesis involved figuring out an integration of the Biot Savart equation for hexagonal finite elements. Without Mathematica it would have been impossible.
deleted 5y ago
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fsh 5y ago
In my experience, Mathematica is probably the best software available for symbolic computations (integrals, derivatives, equation solving,...). The numerical capabilities are alright, but specialized libraries in compiled languages usually perform a lot better. Plotting is absolutely terrible compared to matplotlib.
- billfruit 5y ago
  Compared to Matplotlib? Is that a good benchmark for plotting?
  - queuebert 5y ago
    R and Python probably have the best plotting these days, so yes.
gertlex 5y ago
I solely used it in college, but heavily. I'm content with Python now. I never got into making my Mathematica notebooks super presentable, but I think Jupyter notebooks also fill that need really well now. Noteworthy projects: * Visualizing linkages in a car steering system, and then brute-force iterating on lengths of components to reduce bump-steer * Illustrating nuclear reactor core layouts (fuel rods, control rods) using "plotted" hexagons. I think I subsequently animated this to illustrate... something (Bummer I don't use my nuclear engineering learnings anymore). But in general, it was just a great tool at the time for engineering-oriented calculations and graphs. Matlab's syntax never appealed to me. Oh, and my absolute favorite thing was the interactive documentation that Mathematica had. Made trying new things super easy; search the docs, modify the snippet, and now you understand it!
ssivark 5y ago
(In addition to what the other comments point out…) It’s also an extremely lispy language (fundamentally based on term rewriting as a computational model) where it’s very intuitive to do higher order functions and structural manipulations in the spirit of macros. In my experience, makes it an absolute cinch for tackling complicated one off wrangling tasks. It’s a unique language that is absolutely unparalleled in the directions it’s good at. I’ve had friends (in grad school) tell me that they don’t mind the potential lifelong dependence because paying a few hundred dollars annually for Mathematica is so worth the capability amplification they get.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I like to use it for drawing 3D graphics and making little geometry gifs, couple of examples here https://ello.co/jazzyjackson https://ello.co/jazzyjackson

ocschwar 5y ago

My master's thesis involved figuring out an integration of the Biot Savart equation for hexagonal finite elements. Without Mathematica it would have been impossible.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fsh 5y ago

In my experience, Mathematica is probably the best software available for symbolic computations (integrals, derivatives, equation solving,...). The numerical capabilities are alright, but specialized libraries in compiled languages usually perform a lot better. Plotting is absolutely terrible compared to matplotlib.

billfruit 5y ago
Compared to Matplotlib? Is that a good benchmark for plotting?
- queuebert 5y ago
  R and Python probably have the best plotting these days, so yes.

gertlex 5y ago

I solely used it in college, but heavily. I'm content with Python now. I never got into making my Mathematica notebooks super presentable, but I think Jupyter notebooks also fill that need really well now. Noteworthy projects: * Visualizing linkages in a car steering system, and then brute-force iterating on lengths of components to reduce bump-steer * Illustrating nuclear reactor core layouts (fuel rods, control rods) using "plotted" hexagons. I think I subsequently animated this to illustrate... something (Bummer I don't use my nuclear engineering learnings anymore). But in general, it was just a great tool at the time for engineering-oriented calculations and graphs. Matlab's syntax never appealed to me. Oh, and my absolute favorite thing was the interactive documentation that Mathematica had. Made trying new things super easy; search the docs, modify the snippet, and now you understand it!

ssivark 5y ago

(In addition to what the other comments point out…) It’s also an extremely lispy language (fundamentally based on term rewriting as a computational model) where it’s very intuitive to do higher order functions and structural manipulations in the spirit of macros. In my experience, makes it an absolute cinch for tackling complicated one off wrangling tasks. It’s a unique language that is absolutely unparalleled in the directions it’s good at. I’ve had friends (in grad school) tell me that they don’t mind the potential lifelong dependence because paying a few hundred dollars annually for Mathematica is so worth the capability amplification they get.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

I like to use it for drawing 3D graphics and making little geometry gifs, couple of examples here https://ello.co/jazzyjackson https://ello.co/jazzyjackson