News, Views & Insights
Although this year’s Wolfram Technology Conference was virtual, that didn’t stop us from running the ninth annual One-Liner Competition, where attendees vie to produce the most amazing results they can with 128 or fewer characters of Wolfram Language code. Here are the winners, including an audio game, a hands-free 3D viewer and code that makes up countries.
Blockchain was integrated into the Wolfram Language in 2018 with the release of Version 11.3, featuring a set of functions that is constantly improved and expanded upon by our team. Currently supporting a seamless connection to the Bitcoin, Ethereum, ARK and bloxberg mainnets, testnets and devnets, Wolfram introduced to the distributed ledger technology (DLT) space its philosophy of injecting computational intelligence everywhere through Wolfram Blockchain Labs, with the mission of enabling blockchain-based commerce and business model innovation.
Earth has experienced five major extinctions since life first appeared almost four billion years ago. The sixth is happening right now; the current extinction rate is between one hundred and one thousand times greater than what it was before 1800.
Despite the alarming extinction rate, it’s easier than ever to document biodiversity with the help of the Wolfram Language. Using the monarch butterfly as an example, I will explore the new biodiversity data access functions in the Wolfram Function Repository and how they can help you join a community of thousands of citizen scientists from iNaturalist in preserving biodiversity.
This roundup of Wolfram Community contributions features several different functions and tools related to current times, from the global pandemic to sustainable spaces and homeschool puzzles. Read on to see just a few creative examples from some of our favorite Community members and Wolfram Language wizzes.
While programming in the Wolfram Language, I am able to quickly and easily get results—one of the best aspects of writing code in a high-level language. The Wolfram Language is so easy to use that I have the freedom to pursue ideas on a whim, even if I know those ideas may not accomplish anything great or work toward a larger goal. In most cases, within a few minutes I figure out if the idea is a dead end. I also figure out if I am on the path to creating something useful or, better yet, fun.
A noteworthy achievement of artificial intelligence, since it is driven by artificial neural networks under the label deep learning, is the ability to create artistic works to generate images, text and sounds. At the core of this breakthrough is a basic method to train neural networks that was introduced by Ian Goodfellow in 2014 and was called by Yann LeCun “the most interesting idea in the last 10 years in machine learning”: generative adversarial networks (GANs). A GAN is a way to train a generative network that produces realistic-looking fake samples out of a latent seed, which can be some arbitrary data or random numbers sampled from a simple distribution. Let’s look at how to do so with some of the new capabilities developed for Mathematica Version 12.1.
While catching up with my old friends Alice and Bob on Zoom a few days ago, I became intrigued by their recent card game hobby—and how they used the Wolfram Language to settle an argument. To figure out who gets to go first at the start of the game, they take one suit (spades) from a full deck, and each draws a card. Then, the person with the highest card value wins. Because they are using only one suit, there can be no ties. Simple, right?
Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram System Modeler trial. Have you ever thought about making your own musical instruments? What about making mathematical models of your instruments? Whether you're someone looking for a cost-effective alternative, a minimalist with dreams of maximalist sounds or a Wolfram Language enthusiast curious about sound design, you can build a virtual version of a modular synthesizer using Wolfram System Modeler.
Sudoku is a popular game that pushes the player’s analytical, mathematical and mental abilities. Solving sudoku problems has long been discussed on Wolfram Community, and there has been some fantastic code presented to solve sudoku problems. To add to that discussion, I will demonstrate several features that are new to Mathematica Version 12.1, including how this game can be solved as an integer optimization problem using the function LinearOptimization, as well as how you can generate new sudoku games.