Appendix A: Introduction to Mathematica

Mathematica is a powerful tool for performing both symbolic and numerical calculations. It is available on all major computing platforms, including Macintosh, Windows and UNIX systems. The notebook interface on all systems is very similar. A user normally enters commands in cells in a notebook window and executes these commands to see the results appear in the same notebook. Starting with version 3.0 of Mathematica, the notebook interface has become quite sophisticated. In addition to Mathematica input and output, the notebooks can now contain graphics and typeset text, including all mathematics symbols and complicated equations. The style of a cell determines whether it contains live input and output or just text. Similar to a word processor, several other specialized cell styles are available to create section headings, sub-headings, etc. A large number of pull-down menus are available to manipulate information in different notebook cells.