Computing with Mathematica

Rating:
Summary: Lots of Problems for Students to Work On
Review: Mathematica has become a common part of many undergraduates' toolkits, for those majoring in engineering or the physical sciences. Many undergraduate courses also use it, by assigning problems that explicity require running it to obtain answers. Certainly, its ability to perform symbolic algebra is excellent.

Given all this, the authors have produced a worthy book that meets a real need amongst some students for an explanatory text. In some ways, perhaps the most useful thing is the ample number of problems, that for a given topic, scale from simple to hard. Possibly the best way for the reader to assimilate the ideas and to be able to manipulate Mathematica facilely.

The book does not offer a comprehensive description of all the features of Mathematica. Which may be for the best, in terms of avoiding information overload on the student. Rather, it is seen as the place to defer to the official Mathematica online and hardcopy documentation.