WOLFRAM

Computational Thinking

Computation & Analysis

System Dynamics Modeling—Now Available with the Business Simulation Library

Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram System Modeler trial. System dynamics (SD) is a very powerful and flexible modeling paradigm, ideally suited to tackle strategic business, economics and public policy issues. Some years ago, Guido Wolf Reichert, management consultant and developer for BSL Management Support, Germany, stumbled into problems while modeling the public transport system in a German metropolis. He had reached the technical limits of the established SD software. While looking for alternatives, he discovered Wolfram System Modeler.

Education & Academic

Project-Based Life Skills from Wolfram’s Emerging Leaders Program

In the days of online learning and remote work, students are gaining valuable skills to help them navigate their education. With new needs for greater independence in their learning journeys, better time management and finding communities in unexpected places, students are already encountering important lessons. Student-centered events like the Wolfram Emerging Leaders Program help foster success in the workplace and in life, no matter what happens in the world.

Announcements & Events

The Advention of Coding: Advent of Code Solutions in the Wolfram Language

Editor’s note: The following post is based on the 2020 Advent of Code challenge, “an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like.” Guest author Philip Maymin delves into why he chose to use the Wolfram Language to solve these queries with a how-to on learning the language.

Education & Academic

How We Navigated a Hybrid Remote Learning Environment Using Wolfram Technology

The past year of learning ushered in a variety of new experiences for instructors and students alike, and the United States Military Academy at West Point was no exception. In addition to masks in the classroom, reduced class sizes to allow for social distancing, rigorous testing and tracing efforts, and precautionary remote video classes, we have also needed to adjust aspects of our teaching styles. While such adjustments were voluntary, to enhance the discussion I chose to teach several lessons outside under large white tents and even in stadium bleachers to safely enable larger conversations with my cadets. Sometimes this meant carrying a large whiteboard with a tripod out to the stadium. At other times it meant putting quiz-style questions on a website so that students could submit answers via forms that were easier to grade while allowing everyone to work at a safe distance on individual devices.

Computation & Analysis

Deploy a Neural Network to Your iOS Device Using the Wolfram Language

Today’s handheld devices are powerful enough to run neural networks locally without the need for a cloud server connection, which can be a great convenience when you’re on the go. Deploying and running a custom neural network on your phone or tablet is not straightforward, though, and the process depends on the operating system of the machine. In this post, I will focus on iOS devices and walk you through all the necessary steps to train a custom image classifier neural network model using the Wolfram Language, export it through ONNX (new in Version 12.2), convert it to Core ML (Apple’s machine learning framework for iOS apps) and finally deploy it to your iPhone or iPad.

Computation & Analysis

Data Science at Home: Leverage Wolfram’s Device Integration to Analyze Your Vehicle’s Performance

Cars are getting smarter and more connected, yet how much have you explored the technology that helps run our vehicles? I was curious to see how I could connect to my vehicle’s communication center and what kind of interface I could create in Wolfram Notebooks to report on the data gathered.

Computation & Analysis

Simulating Zero Gravity to Demonstrate the Dzhanibekov Effect and Other Surprising Physics Models

Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram System Modeler trial. Wolfram System Modeler 12.2 was just released, featuring things such as personalization of plots, new model libraries and extended GUI support for advanced modeling. One of the other additions is a new workflow for generating 3D models from 3D shapes. We will use this feature to illustrate some bizarre and counterintuitive physics.

Announcements & Events

Crop Production Forecasts and Groundwater Trends Based on the Predator–Prey Model

Ever since Thomas Robert Malthus’s book An Essay on the Principle of Population, scientists have sought to determine the limit to the growth of human population due to finite resources. One such resource is groundwater. About 40% of global food production ultimately depends on irrigation and, increasingly, the source of irrigation water is groundwater aquifers. Groundwater irrigation allows farmers to increase crop yields, maintain them in dry spells and overcome temporal mismatches between growing seasons and seasonal rain. In many parts of the world, groundwater withdrawal (or pumping from wells) exceeds recharge, leading to groundwater depletion. In these regions, the “lifespan” of groundwater aquifers is limited, putting a bound on the amount of irrigation per year and the sustainability of groundwater-based agriculture. The goal of this study was to propose a dynamical systems framework capable of explaining past trends in groundwater-based irrigation and providing forecasts of food production.

Announcements & Events

A Virtual Face-off: Replaying the 2020 Livecoding Championship

In early October, by what at this point can only be a time-honored tradition, the Livecoding Championship returned in its fifth annual iteration as a special event during the 2020 Wolfram Technology Conference. As in preceding years, the championship offered top Wolfram Language programmers a chance to show off their knowledge, agility, typing speed and documentation-reading skills to an unfailingly adoring audience.

Follow along with this post by watching this recorded video of the 2020 Livecoding Championship livestream!