October 29, 2020 — Paige Bremner, Publishing Assistant, Document & Media Systems
The pandemic has postponed or canceled a lot of things this year, but luckily learning isn’t one of them. Check out these picks for new Wolfram Language books that will help you explore new software, calculus, engineering and more from the comfort of home.
September 29, 2020 — Paige Bremner, Publishing Assistant, Document & Media Systems
September 24 marked the release of the third edition of one of our most successful and widespread teaching tools: Cliff Hastings, Kelvin Mischo and Michael Morrison’s debut book, Hands-on Start to Wolfram Mathematica and Programming with the Wolfram Language. As the publishing assistant at Wolfram Research, I’ve spent the past few weeks working with the authors to get this new version ready to publish. As we did with the second-edition release, I’ll let Cliff and Kelvin tell us a bit about what’s new in the third edition, why Hands-on Start is so successful and what’s on the horizon (Hands-on Start to Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition!).
September 24, 2020 — Jamie Peterson, Technical Programs Manager, Wolfram U
Our second year of the Wolfram Data Science Boot Camp (and the first fully virtual edition) wrapped at the end of July. After completing final project assessments last week and issuing certificates, we can confidently say it was a success! Wolfram U mentors helped dozens of budding data scientists learn the multiparadigm approach and develop valuable skills in analysis, visualization, interface construction and more. Campers collaborated on projects of their own design, earning certifications along the way.
We’re proud of everyone who participated, and their efforts deserve some recognition! So without further ado, here’s a quick recap: how we ran the camp, what kinds of projects we saw and the lowdown on our new Level II Certification program.
September 17, 2020 — Hamza Alsamraee, Document & Media Systems
A few months before I accepted a Wolfram Research internship—around March—I was very fearful, and so was the majority of the world. We knew very little about the novel coronavirus, and the data was just not robust. In addition to the limited data we had, the scientific process necessarily takes time, so even that was not used to its full extent. In a world where not enough data can quickly become data overload, the question didn’t seem to be finding more data, but rather how can one extract useful and meaningful information from the available data?
A worldwide pandemic is definitely stressful, but a worldwide pandemic without accessible and computable information is much more so. Using Wolfram technologies in coordination with several internal teams, I created a Wolfram U course called COVID-19 Data Analysis and Visualization to try and cut through the informational fog and find some clarity. I saw this course as one that gives power to everyone to be able to look at data and gain insight. After all, data is knowledge, and knowledge is power.
September 15, 2020 — Cliff Hastings, Director, Sales & Strategic Initiatives
In March, my work life changed dramatically, as it did for many around the world. After working in an office environment for almost 25 years, I was told that I needed to work from home for the first time. So I took my laptop, power cord and extra battery home with the expectation that I’d be there for one to two weeks. The first couple of days were a mad dash with our IT department to ensure my VPN, softphone and main tools were set up correctly for remote work. They were great, and for the most part, I was working at 90% right away. The experience opened my eyes, as many of my sales employees work remotely, so I learned a lot about the positives (and, of course, the negatives) they often experience that I may not have appreciated in the past.
September 2, 2020 — Arben Kalziqi, Education Evangelist, Education Partnerships
Schooling looks a little different in 2020. Whether it’s technical issues with the transition to online courses, decreased physical attendance or delayed and last-minute openings, we’re all feeling the pressure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
At Wolfram Research, we’ve been involved in education for decades and count millions of parents, teachers and students as both our customers and our friends. Because of this longstanding commitment to learning, we have content, experts and platforms at the ready to help parents and students who are looking for ways to augment their learning.
August 14, 2020 — Devendra Kapadia, Manager of Calculus & Algebra, Algorithms R&D
Linear algebra is probably the easiest and the most useful branch of modern mathematics. Indeed, topics such as matrices and linear equations are often taught in middle or high school. On the other hand, concepts and techniques from linear algebra underlie cutting-edge disciplines such as data science and quantum computation. And in the field of numerical analysis, everything is linear algebra!
Today, I am proud to announce a free interactive course, Introduction to Linear Algebra, that will help students all over the world to master this wonderful subject. The course uses the powerful functions for matrix operations in the Wolfram Language and addresses questions such as “How long would it take to solve a system of 500 linear equations?” or “How does data compression work?”
July 30, 2020 — Rory Foulger, Instructional Designer & Technologist, Outreach & Communications
For more on Wolfram’s summer education programs, read our post about the Wolfram Summer School.
This year marked the ninth annual Wolfram High School Summer Camp, and it was a truly amazing experience. Forty-four students joined us remotely from around the world—from almost on the doorstep of Wolfram’s headquarters in Illinois to as far-flung as Kazakhstan, Germany, Russia, South Korea and India. They dedicated two weeks to learning the Wolfram Language, creating remarkably high-level independent projects and developing strong computational thinking skills. Our students had the opportunity to learn from subject experts from Wolfram Research, their mentors and teaching assistants (TAs) and, of course, our CEO Stephen Wolfram, who met with each student to discuss their projects.
July 30, 2020 — Vitaliy Kaurov, Academic Director, Wolfram Science and Innovation Initiatives
For more on Wolfram’s summer education programs, read our post about the Wolfram Summer Camp.
The 18th annual Wolfram Summer School has just thrown its graduation party in High Fidelity, a virtual world augmented with spatial audio. Students and faculty sang together during karaoke with a DJ and jukebox, chatted away mixing techspeak and humor, said farewells and had a ball celebrating the completion of the program. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we chose to make our summer programs more accessible to the students and faculty from all corners of the world—this year from 25 countries and all populated continents.
July 14, 2020 — Alec Titterton, CBM Content Development Manager, European Sales
As Conrad Wolfram writes in his new book, education in computational thinking and quantitative problem solving are largely absent from today’s mathematics curricula. With the current crisis changing education practice in many ways, what better time to try out a sample of our new curriculum? It’s a curriculum fit for learners who want to be better prepared for an AI age where computers can be used to their full potential.
It’s a beta release, a first sample manifestation of what can be deployed in a self-study mode to implement The Math(s) Fix. We’re stretching what can be done in a browser to the limit, so please be patient with refresh times. The content and intended learning outcomes are the key points to look out for; you can see how we’ve merged the learning of general “thinking” outcomes and computation outcomes with real contexts in accessible problems.
