At some point in the course we may have a take-home quiz in which I ask you to do some work with Mathematica and hand it in. Mathematica is an example of a “computer algebra system.” This means that Mathematica is a computer program that does computations in much the same way that we would do them by hand. The Mathematics Computer Laboratory in the basement of Witmer Hall has computers on which you can run Mathematica.
If you are interested, you can download an example of a Mathematica notebook. A Mathematica notebook is a special type of file containing Mathematica commands. I plan to pass out a paper copy of a notebook in class sometime during the semester. If you want to look at the notebook now, first go to the Math Lab sometime during its hours of operation. Open up a Web browser and come to this page. Then click on the following link:
basics.nb.Save this file on the hard drive of the computer. Then start Mathematica and open the file you just saved.
Note 1: You may save files on the hard drives of the computers in the Math Lab, but the maintenance people will delete them after a few days.
Note 2: Do not panic! I will provide more details in class and in the handout that I pass out. But you may want to try this now if you are interested. You can always ask for help from a friend or from the monitor (i.e. the attendant) in the Math Lab.
Note 3: The paper handout that I give you will explain how to make a Mathematica notebook without downloading basics.nb.
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