News, Views & Insights
In his blog post announcing the launch of Mathematica Version 12.1, Stephen Wolfram mentioned the extensive updates to Dataset that we undertook to make it easier to explore, understand and present your data. Here is how the updated Dataset works and how you can use it to gain deeper insight into your data.
In June 2019, Stephen Wolfram announced the Wolfram Function Repository, a curated repository of functions that can be employed immediately in the Wolfram Language. Since then, the Repository has grown to include more than 1,000 functions in over 20 categories.
Functions included in the Repository range from those that are more general and utilitarian in nature to others with very specific applications. As with all Wolfram Language functions, Repository documentation pages contain examples showing how to use the functions. We’re featuring a few of the functions submitted to the Repository so far that showcase the variety of functions our users have built.
When 20 presidential candidates duke it out on the debate stage, who wins? Americans have been watching a crowded and contentious primary season for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. After the debates, everyone’s talking about who got the most talk time or attention, which exchanges were most exciting or some other measure of who “won” the night—and who might ultimately clinch a victory at the caucuses. So I decided I’d do a little exploration of the debates using the entity framework, text analytics and graph capabilities of the Wolfram Language and see if I could come up with my own measure of a “win” for a debate, based on which candidate was most central to the conversation.
Who has not encountered a stink bug? Perhaps the better question is not if, but when. I remember well my first interactions with stink bugs—partly because of their pungent, cilantro-like odor, but also because in my native Catalan language they are called Bernat pudent ("stinky Bernat") and Bernat is my twin brother's name.
So when I encountered the stink bug again when visiting Champaign, Illinois, for the 2019 Wolfram Technology Conference, it brought up a lot of fond childhood memories. This time, however, two things had changed: the frequency of encounters with the stink bug seemed exponentially greater, and I now had the Wolfram Language to more fully (and computationally) satisfy my curiosity about this reviled insect and its growing impact on our ecosystem. So to get a better picture of the arrival and spread of this invasive bug across the US, I used available observation data and the Wolfram Language to make a map of sightings over the past two decades.
It’s been another busy few months on Wolfram Community! If you’ve kept up with the latest posts, you may have noticed that many are live, interactive notebooks embedded directly from the Wolfram Cloud. Take advantage of this feature for your next post on the Community: when authoring your post, use the "Add Notebook" button in the post editor. Learn more about embedding Wolfram Cloud notebooks directly on your website from the Wolfram Notebook Embedder documentation (or download the JavaScript library directly).
We’ve gathered some of our favorite Wolfram Community posts showing the variety of applications made possible with the Wolfram Language.
Looking to fulfill your New Year's resolution of learning new data science skills? Join Wolfram U for Wolfram Technology in Action: Data Science, a three-part web series demonstrating a range of data science applications in the Wolfram Language. These 90-minute sessions feature recorded talks from the 2019 Wolfram Technology Conference, along with live presentations by Wolfram staff scientists, application developers, software engineers and Wolfram Language users who apply the technology every day to their business operations and research.
Newcomers to Wolfram technology are welcome, as are longtime users wanting to see the latest functionality in the language.
Yellowstone National Park has long been known for its active geysers. These geysers are a surface indication of subterranean volcanic activity in the park. In fact, Yellowstone is actually the location of the Yellowstone Caldera, a supervolcano: a volcano with an exceptionally large magma reservoir. The park has had a history of many explosive eruptions over the last two million years or so.
I’ve found that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) maintains data on the various volcanic calderas and related features, which makes it perfect for computational exploration with the Wolfram Language. This data is in the form of SHP files and related data stored as a ZIP archive. Thanks to the detail of this available data, we can use the Wolfram Language and, in particular, GeoGraphics to get a better picture of what this data is telling us.
When people think about Wolfram technology, corporate enterprise resource management (ERP) isn't the first thing that comes to mind. It certainly wasn't our first thought when we started searching for a new solution to manage our own accounting, customer service, licensing and HR needs. But after looking at the current ERP offerings, we found that none of the existing buy-in options did what we wanted.
So we thought, why not build our own?
The resulting project has been a revelation. Not only have we built something to our taste, but something fundamentally different: a new architecture, new interfaces, a new approach. Using Wolfram technology has not only made development easier; it has given us a revolutionary new perspective. By leveraging our uniquely powerful technology stack—and integrating it tightly with the existing infrastructure—we're redefining what an ERP system can be.