Whew! So much has happened in a year. Consider this number: we added 230 new functions to the Wolfram Language in 2017! The Wolfram Blog traces the path of our company’s technological advancement, so let’s take a look back at 2017 for the blog’s year in review.

Announcing New Products and Features

The year 2017 saw two Wolfram Language releases, a major release of Wolfram SystemModeler, the new Wolfram iOS Player hit the app store, Wolfram|Alpha pumping up its already-unmatched educational value and a host of features and capabilities related to these releases. We’ll start with the Wolfram Language releases.

“The R&D Pipeline Continues: Launching Version 11.1”

Stephen Wolfram says it’s “a minor release that’s not minor.” And if you look at the summary of new features, you’ll see why:

Stephen continues, “There’s a lot here. One might think that a .1 release, nearly 29 years after Version 1.0, wouldn’t have much new any more. But that’s not how things work with the Wolfram Language, or with our company. Instead, as we’ve built our technology stack and our procedures, rather than progressively slowing down, we’ve been continually accelerating.”

“It’s Another Impressive Release! Launching Version 11.2 Today”

The launch of Wolfram Language 11.2 continues the tradition of significant releases. Stephen says, “We have a very deliberate strategy for our releases. Integer releases (like 11) concentrate on major complete new frameworks that we’ll be building on far into the future. ‘.1’ releases (like 11.2) are intended as snapshots of the latest output from our R&D pipeline—delivering new capabilities large and small as soon as they’re ready.”

“Launching the Wolfram Data Repository: Data Publishing That Really Works”

“It’s been one of my goals with the Wolfram Language to build into it as much data as possible—and make all of that data immediately usable and computable.” To this end, Stephen and company have been working on the Wolfram Data Repository, which is now available. Over time, this resource will snowball into a massive trove of computable information. Read more about it in Stephen’s post. But, more importantly, contribute to the Repository with your own data!

“A New Level of Step-by-Step Solutions in Wolfram|Alpha”

Our post about Wolfram|Alpha Pro upgrades was one of the most popular of the year. And all the web traffic around Wolfram|Alpha’s development of step-by-step solutions is not surprising when you consider that this product is the educational tool for anyone studying (or teaching!) mathematics in high school or early college. Read the post to find out why students and forward-thinking teachers recommend Wolfram|Alpha Pro products.

“Notebooks in Your Pocket—WolframPlayer for iOS Is Now Shipping”

John Fultz, Wolfram’s director of user interface technology, announced the release of a highly anticipated product—Wolfram Player for iOS. “The beta is over, and we are now shipping Wolfram Player in the App Store. Wolfram Player for iOS joins Wolfram CDF Player on Windows, Mac and Linux as a free platform for sharing your notebook content with the world.” Now Wolfram Notebooks are the premium data presentation tool for every major platform.

“Announcing SystemModeler 5: Symbolic Parametric Simulation, Modular Reconfigurability and 200 New Built-in Components”

The Wolfram MathCore and R&D teams announced a major leap for SystemModeler. “As part of the 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 sequence of releases, we completely rebuilt and modernized the core computational kernel of SystemModeler. Now in SystemModeler 5, we’re able to build on this extremely strong framework to add a whole variety of new capabilities.”

Some of the headlines include:

• Support for continuous media such as fluids and gases, using the latest Modelica libraries
• Almost 200 additional Modelica components, including Media, PowerConverters and Noise libraries
• Complete visual redesign of almost 6,000 icons, for consistency and improved readability
• Support for new GUI workspaces optimized for different levels of development and presentation
• Almost 500 built-in example models for easy exploration and learning
• Modular reconfigurability, allowing different parts of models to be easily switched and modified
• Symbolic parametric simulation: the ability to create a fully computable object representing variations of model parameters
• Importing and exporting FMI 2 models for broad model interchange and system integration

“Communication in Industry 4.0 with Wolfram SystemModeler and OPC UA”

Earlier last year Markus Dahl, applications engineer, announced another advancement within the SystemModeler realm—the integration of OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). “Wolfram SystemModeler can be utilized very effectively when combining different Modelica libraries, such as ModelPlug and OPCUA, to either create virtual prototypes of systems or test them in the real world using cheap devices like Arduinos or Raspberry Pis. The tested code for the system can then easily be exported to another system, or used directly in a HIL (hardware-in-the-loop) simulation.”

Case-Use Blogs That Hit Big

In 2017 we had some blog posts that made quite a splash by showing off Wolfram technology. From insights into the science behind movies to timely new views on history, the Wolfram Language provided some highlight moments in public conversations this year. Let’s check out a few…

“Hidden Figures: Modern Approaches to Orbit and Reentry Calculations”

The story of mathematician Katherine Johnson and two of her NASA colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, was in the spotlight at the 2017 Academy Awards, where the film about these women—Hidden Figures—was nominated for three Oscars. Three Wolfram scientists took a look at the math/physics problems the women grappled with, albeit with the luxury of modern computational tools found in the Wolfram Language. Our scientists commented on the crucial nature of Johnson’s work: “Computers were in their early days at this time, so Johnson and her team’s ability to perform complicated navigational orbital mechanics problems without the use of a computer provided an important sanity check against the early computer results.”

“Analyzing and Translating an Alien Language: Arrival, Logograms and the Wolfram Language”

Another Best Picture nominee in 2017 was Arrival, a film for which Stephen and Christoper Wolfram served as scientific advisors. Stephen wrote an often-cited blog post about the experience, Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?. On the set, Christopher was tasked with analyzing and writing code for a fictional nonlinear visual language. On January 31, he demonstrated the development process he went through in a livecoding event broadcast on LiveEdu.tv. This livecoding session garnered almost 60,000 views.

“Exploring a Boxing Legend’s Career with the Wolfram Language: Ali at 75”

Wolfram celebrated the birthday of the late, great Muhammad Ali with a blog post from one of our data scientists, Jofre Espigule-Pons. Using charts and graphs from histograms and network plots, Espigule-Pons examined Ali’s boxing career, his opponent pool and even his poetry. This tribute to the boxing icon was one of the most-loved blog posts of 2017.

“Analyzing Social Networks of Colonial Boston Revolutionaries with the Wolfram Language”

For the Fourth of July holiday, Swede White, Wolfram’s media and communications specialist, used a variety of functions in the Wolfram Language to analyze the social networks of the revolutionaries who shaped our nation. (Yes, social networks existed before Facebook was a thing!) The data visualizations are enlightening. It turns out that Paul Revere was the right guy to spread the warning: although he never rode through towns shouting, “The British are coming,” he had the most social connections.

“Finding X in Espresso: Adventures in Computational Lexicology”

So you say there’s no X in espresso. But are you certain? Vitaliy Kaurov, academic director of the Wolfram Science and Innovation Initiatives, examines the history behind this point of contention. This blog post is truly a shining example of what computational analysis can do for fields such as linguistics and lexicology. And it became a social media hit to boot, especially in certain circles of the Reddit world where pop culture debates can be virtually endless.

“How to Win at Risk: Exact Probabilities”

Just in time for the holiday board game season, popular Wolfram blogger Jon McLoone, director of technical communication and strategy, breaks down the exact probabilities of winning Risk. There are other Risk win/loss estimators out there, but they are just that—estimations. John uses the Wolfram Language to give exact odds for each battle possibility the game offers. Absolute candy for gamer math enthusiasts!

We had a great year at Wolfram Research, and we wish you a productive and rewarding 2018!