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My Wolfram Tech Conference 2016 Highlights

Here are just a handful of things I heard while attending my first Wolfram Technology Conference: "We had a nearly 4-billion-time speedup on this code example." "We've worked together for over 9 years, and now we're finally meeting!" "Coding in the Wolfram Language is like collaborating with 200 or 300 experts." "You can turn financial data into rap music. Instead, how about we turn rap music into financial data?" As a first-timer from the Wolfram Blog Team attending the Technology Conference, I wanted to share with you some of the highlights for me---making new friends, watching Wolfram Language experts code and seeing what the Wolfram family has been up to around the world this past year.
Zach Littrell, Technical Content Writer, Technical Communications and Strategy Group
Best of Blog

Mersenne Primes and the Lucas–Lehmer Test

Introduction

A Mersenne prime is a prime number of the form Mp = 2p – 1, where the exponent p must also be prime. These primes take their name from the French mathematician and religious scholar Marin Mersenne, who produced a list of primes of this form in the first half of the seventeenth century. It has been known since antiquity that the first four of these, M2 = 3, M3 = 7, M5 = 31 and M7 = 127, are prime.
John McGee, Applications Developer, Wolfram Technology Group
Education & Academic

New Wolfram Language Books

We are constantly surprised by what fascinating applications and topics Wolfram Language experts are writing about, and we're happy to again share with you some of these amazing authors' works. With topics ranging from learning to use the Wolfram Language on a Raspberry Pi to a groundbreaking book with a novel approach to calculations, you are bound to find a publication perfect for your interests.
Zach Littrell, Technical Content Writer, Technical Communications and Strategy Group
Education & Academic

Wolfram Language Books around the World

The population of Wolfram Language speakers around the globe has only grown since the language's inception almost thirty years ago, and we always enjoy discovering users and authors who share their passion for Wolfram technologies in their own languages. So in this post, we are highlighting foreign-language books around the world that utilize Wolfram technologies, from a mathematical toolbox in Japanese to an introduction on bioinformatics from Germany.

Zach Littrell, Technical Content Writer, Technical Communications and Strategy Group
Education & Academic

An Exact Value for the Planck Constant: Why Reaching It Took 100 Years

Blog communicated on behalf of Jean-Charles de Borda.

Some thoughts for World Metrology Day 2016

Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of precision and science I've been around for a long, long time Stole many a man's pound and toise And I was around when Louis XVI Had his moment of doubt and pain Made damn sure that metric rules Through platinum standards made forever Pleased to meet you Hope you guess my name

Introduction and about me

In case you can't guess: I am Jean-Charles de Borda, sailor, mathematician, scientist, and member of the Académie des Sciences, born on May 4, 1733, in Dax, France. Two weeks ago would have been my 283rd birthday. This is me:
Michael Trott, Chief Scientist, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Education & Academic

New Derivatives of the Bessel Functions Have Been Discovered with the Help of the Wolfram Language!

Nearly two hundred years after Friedrich Bessel introduced his eponymous functions, expressions for their derivatives with respect to parameters, valid over the double complex plane, have been found.
 In this blog we will show and briefly discuss some formerly unknown derivatives of special functions (primarily Bessel and related functions), and explore the history and current status of differentiation by parameters of hypergeometric and other functions. One of the main formulas found (more details below) is a closed form for the first derivative of one of the most popular special functions, the Bessel function J:
Oleg Marichev, Integration & Special Function Developer, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content Yury Brychkov, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Education & Academic

Newest Wolfram Technologies Books Cover Range of STEM Topics

Authors that choose to incorporate Wolfram technologies into their books are practitioners in a variety of STEM fields. Their work is an invaluable resource of information about the application of Mathematica, the Wolfram Language, and other Wolfram technologies for hobbyists, STEM professionals, and students.
Wolfram Blog Team
Education & Academic

In Defense of Infinity

The Glencoe Algebra II study materials (p. 10) make an amazing claim (Reddit). This statement is in a math textbook, but it is horrifyingly wrong. A statement like "the letters A--Z cannot be matched up with the numbers 1--26" would be similarly wrong. These two sets of the same size (here, 26) can be matched up as A1, B2, C3, ..., Z26. Can the rational numbers be matched up with the integers? Both are infinite, which allows for the tricks of a technique called Hilbert's hotel, a hotel with infinite numbered rooms that can always make room for one more guest. The Glencoe claim asks if the cardinality of the integers and rationals is the same. Both are , or Aleph-0, which Georg Cantor proved in the 1870s.
Ed Pegg Jr, Scientific Information Editor, Scientific Information Group
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