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Mathematics

Education & Academic

Stack the Odds in Your Favor and Master Probability with Wolfram Language

"I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably." —Christiaan Huygens

Have you ever wondered how health insurance premiums are calculated or why healthcare is so expensive? Or what led to the financial crisis of 2008? Or whether nuclear power is safe? The answers to these questions require an understanding of probability, which is the best tool that we have for coping with an uncertain world. In fact, an understanding of probability is required for professionals in a large number of fields, including data science, finance, engineering, biology, chemistry, medicine and actuarial science.
Marc Vicuna, Kernel Developer, Algorithms R&D
Education & Academic

Active Learning with Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition

As you may know from your own experience (or perhaps from the literature on education), passively receiving information does not lead to new knowledge in the same way that active participation in inquiry leads to new knowledge. Active learning describes instructional methods that engage students in the learning process. Student participation in the classroom typically leads to deeper knowledge, more developed critical thinking skills and increased motivation to continue learning. In this post, you will see example activities demonstrating how Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition can support active learning methods in your classroom.
Jordan Hasler, Senior Developer, Wolfram|Alpha Math Content John McNally, Solutions Developer, Academic Innovation Support
Education & Academic

Wolfram|Alpha Pro Teaches Step-by-Step Arithmetic for All Grade Levels

In grade school, long arithmetic is considered a foundational math skill. In the past several decades in the United States, long arithmetic has traditionally been introduced between first and fifth grade, and remains crucial for students of all ages. The Common Core State Standards for mathematics indicate that first-grade students should learn how to add “a two-digit number and a one-digit number.” By second grade, students “add and subtract within 1000” and, in particular, “relate the strategy to a written method.” In third grade, multiplication by powers of 10 is introduced, and by fourth grade students are tasked to “use place value understanding and properties of operations to perform multi-digit arithmetic,” including multiplication and division. A fifth grader will not only be expected to “fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm,” but also “add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals.”
AnneMarie Torresen, Math Developer, Wolfram|Alpha Math Content
Education & Academic

Fractional Calculus in Wolfram Language 13.1

What is the half-derivative of x?

Fractional calculus studies the extension of derivatives and integrals to such fractional orders, along with methods of solving differential equations involving these fractional-order derivatives and integrals. This branch is becoming more and more popular in fluid dynamics, control theory, signal processing and other areas. Realizing the importance and potential of this topic, we have added support for fractional derivatives and integrals in the recent release of Version 13.1 of the Wolfram Language.
Tigran Ishkhanyan, Algorithms R&D
Education & Academic

New in 13: Cryptography, Blockchains & NFTs

Two years ago we released Version 12.0 of the Wolfram Language. Here are the updates in cryptography, blockchains and NFTs since then, including the latest features in 13.0. The contents of this post are compiled from Stephen Wolfram's Release Announcements for 12.1, 12.2, 12.3 and 13.0.

 

Cryptography & Security (December 2020)

One of the things we want to do with Wolfram Language is to make it as easy as possible to connect with pretty much any external system. And in modern times an important part of that is being able to conveniently handle cryptographic protocols. And ever since we started introducing cryptography directly into the Wolfram Language five years ago, I’ve been surprised at just how much the symbolic character of the Wolfram Language has allowed us to clarify and streamline things to do with cryptography.
Stephen Wolfram
Education & Academic

The Physicalization of Metamathematics and Its Implications for the Foundations of Mathematics

One of the many surprising (and to me, unexpected) implications of our Physics Project is its suggestion of a very deep correspondence between the foundations of physics and mathematics. We might have imagined that physics would have certain laws, and mathematics would have certain theories, and that while they might be historically related, there wouldn’t be any fundamental formal correspondence between them.

But what our Physics Project suggests is that underneath everything we physically experience there is a single very general abstract structure—that we call the ruliad—and that our physical laws arise in an inexorable way from the particular samples we take of this structure. We can think of the ruliad as the entangled limit of all possible computations—or in effect a representation of all possible formal processes. And this then leads us to the idea that perhaps the ruliad might underlie not only physics but also mathematics—and that everything in mathematics, like everything in physics, might just be the result of sampling the ruliad.

Stephen Wolfram
Education & Academic

Learning Differential Equations in 10 Hours or Fewer with the Wolfram Language

Differential equations are a cornerstone of modern mathematics. From quantum mechanics to population dynamics and stock market predictions, they play a crucial role in understanding the world around us. For this reason, courses on differential equations are core for many undergraduate degrees in the natural sciences, engineering and other fields.
Luke Titus, Team Lead, Sales & Services
Current Events & History

The Singular Euler–Maclaurin Expansion A New Twist to a Centuries-Old Problem

Of all mathematical operations, addition is the most basic: It’s what we learn first in school. Historically, it is the most ancient. While the simple task of getting the sum of two numbers is simple, sums of many numbers can easily turn into a challenging numerical problem if the number of summands is very large.

Andreas A. Buchheit, Guest Author Torsten Keßler, Guest Author
Current Events & History

Is Your Function Continuous? Squaring Away the New Function Properties in the Wolfram Language

[Wolfram_Notebook_Download]

The Wolfram Language has several hundred built-in functions, ranging from sine to Heun. As a user, you can extend this collection in infinitely many ways by applying arithmetic operations and function composition. This could lead you to defining expressions of bewildering complexity, such as the following:

&#10005 f = SinhIntegral[ LogisticSigmoid[ ScorerHi[Tanh[AiryAi[HermiteH[-(1/2), x] - x + 1]]]]];
You may then ask, “Is continuous?” or “Can be written as a composition of an increasing function with another function?” The powerful new tools for studying function properties in Version 12.2 provide quick answers to such questions—opening the doors for applying a network of theorems and ideas that have been developed by mathematicians during the last few centuries.
Devendra Kapadia, Manager of Calculus and Algebra, Algorithms R&D
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