Mathematica by example /

One of a growing number of Mathematica texts, with nearly 600 completely worked examples, making it the most extensive volume of usable examples published to date. All examples are fully illustrated using copies of Macintosh screen prints; each illustration contains one or more insert notations of help or information. After a very brief discussion of how to access Mathematica and what it looks like on the Macintosh, the authors present examples, chosen from science, mathematics, and business. This is the first Mathematica text with business applications that this reviewer has seen. To use these materials one should have a working knowledge of Mathematica. A good companion text to precede this one is N. Blachman's Mathematica: A Practical Approach (CH, Oct'92). The materials are suitable for both students and practitioners. Illustrations are plentiful but the quality is less than acceptable in many places; 2-D and 3-D gray-scale illustrations are poor. The words and special characters in some illustrations are difficult to read. Some of the boldface type and italic type are unreadable. An excellent choice was the use of boldface type for the text the user must enter. Sparse references; good index. Advanced undergraduates and up. J. C. Biddle; University of Louisville