A Review of Mathematica by Richard J. Fateman, UC Berkeley

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/mma.review.pdf

The Mathematica computer system is reviewed from the perspective
of its contributions to symbolic and algebraic computation, as
well as its stated goals.

Design and implementation issues are discussed.

On Jul 12, 9:57 am, Vladimir Bondarenko cybertester.com> wrote:

Damn it! You should have warned us. This review is 15-16 years old!

How about some recent reviews.

I'm not interested in a review of Mathematica 1.2

Steven Siew :

Steven Siew :

Considering how complex systems are Mma and Maple
I don't think it is an easy task a complete review of them.

"Vladimir Bondarenko" cybertester.com> wrote in message
news:1184198247.111915.266540@n60g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

As far as I am concerned, Mathematica is the greatest invention since sliced
bread!
If you know of a better multi-purpose software system, please name it.
Mike M

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:22:13 -0700, Mike M wrote:

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:22:13 -0700, "Mike M"
comcast.net> wrote:

In article comcast.com>,
Mike M comcast.net> wrote:

Was sliced bread such a great invention? It is much
harder to get good bread since it came out.

I agree with Herman Rubin on the importance of notation, but I think
we disagree on what that notation should be.

Here is an example. (better set your news reader to fixed-width
font...)

A formula that is part of Filon quadrature, written in infix.
How clear is it compared to the 3 choices written in prefix (lisp) ,
below?
Which is equivalent?

beta= 2*((1+cos(theta)^2)/theta^2 -sin(2*theta)/theta^3),

;; is this a difference of two items? [a]

(setf beta (- (* 2 (/ (+ 1 (expt (cos theta) 2)) (expt theta 2)))
(/ (sin (* 2 theta)) (expt theta 3))))

;; or is it a product of 2 times the difference of two items? [b]

(setf beta (* 2 (- (/ (+ 1 (expt (cos theta) 2)) (expt theta 2))
(/ (sin (* 2 theta)) (expt theta 3)))))

;; or is it a quotient of a difference divided by theta^3? [c]

rjf gmail.com> writes: