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Mathematica bv Example is intended to bridge the gap which has existed between the very
elementary handbooks available on Mathematica and those reference books written for the more
advanced Mathematica users. This book is an extension of a manuscript which was developed to
quickly introduce enough Mathematica commands to a group of students at Georgia Southern
University that they could apply Mathematica towards the solution of nonlinear ordinary
differential equations. In addition to these most basic commands, these students were exposed to
the vast uses of lists in Mathematica. Having worked through this material, these students were
successfully able to take advantage of the capabilities of Mathematica in solving problems of
interest to our class.
Mathematica bv Example is an appropriate reference book for readers of all levels of
Mathematica experience. It introduces the very basic commands and includes examples of
applications of these commands. It also includes commands useful in more advanced areas such as
ordinary and partial differential equations. In all cases, however, examples follow the introduction
of new commands. Of particular note are the sections covering Mathematica Packages (Chapters
7, 8, and 9), because the commands covered in these chapters are absent from most Mathematica
reference books. The material covered in this book applies to all versions of Mathematica as well
with special notes concerning those commands available only in Version 2.0. Other differences in
the various versions of Mathematica are also noted.
Of course, appreciation must be expressed to those who assisted in this project. We would
like to thank our department head Arthur Sparks for his encouragement and moral support and for
being the instigator of the Computer Calculus Project which initiated the idea of writing a book like
Mathematica by Example. We would also like to thank Prof. William F. Ames for suggesting
that we publish our work and for helping us contact the appropriate people at Academic Press. We
would ??? to express appreciation to our editor, Charles B. Glaser, and our production manager,
Simone Payment, for providing a pleasant environment in which to work. We would also like to
thank our colleagues for taking the time to review our manuscript as it was being prepared for
publication. We appreciated their helpful comments. Finally, we would like to thank those close
to us for enduring with us the pressures of meeting a deadline and for graciously accepting our
demanding work schedules. We certainly could not have completed this task without your care
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