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Seven Fun Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do with the Wolfram Demonstrations Project

You already know that Mathematica can do anything technical---modeling, simulation, development, documentation, and so on. But it's also a great tool for relaxing. When you need to take a break from your engineering project or math homework, you don't have to shut down Mathematica. Clear your head with one of these fun activities created by Mathematica users for the Wolfram Demonstrations Project.
Marty McKee, Copywriter, Marketing Communications
Announcements & Events

Check Out Mathematica at SIGGRAPH 2010

SIGGRAPH is one of the most prestigious conferences around for computer graphics professionals. SIGGRAPH 2010 is in Los Angeles, California on July 25–29. We will be there, and if you will be, we hope you'll come visit us. Mathematica has a long history at SIGGRAPH, starting with the Version 1.0 display at the Apple Computer booth in 1988. At past SIGGRAPH conferences, we've showcased many things, including Mathematica features and graphics capabilities. Here’s a short video we played in the background at SIGGRAPH 2009:
Wolfram Blog Team
Education & Academic

Math Coaches and Mathematica

When I attended this year's National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference in San Diego, I met many "math coaches". All teachers are coaches of their classrooms, but I'm referring to teachers whose titles are "coach". These coaches spend time with at-risk or struggling students, trying to help the students gain further success in their education. Coaches spend time working one on one or in small groups with these students to help them achieve a higher level of knowledge. They are looking for interactive ways to get students excited about all of their homework as well as to prepare them for standardized tests—especially in math—in new ways, relevant to the students and the topics. However, very few of these math coaches have computer programming backgrounds. Quite often, their main technology tool has been the basic calculator. These coaches were interested in a tool that would not cost them hours of time to learn. Insert Mathematica!
Andy Dorsett, Senior Academic Account Manager, Academic Sales
Computation & Analysis

Developing the Kronos Retail Labor Index with Mathematica

In recent years, predicting the health of the U.S. economy has become more complicated than ever. Economists are constantly on the lookout for new ways to predict the economy's future path, but discovering significant new economic indicators has become more difficult. The Kronos Retail Labor Index is an exciting new leading economic indicator of the overall health of the U.S. economy. Dr. Robert Yerex, chief economist at Kronos, used Mathematica exclusively in its development and monthly production.
Deepa Nair, Technical Marketing Writer, Technical Communications & Strategy Group
Education & Academic

Sicherman Dice

Is it possible to have a pair of nonstandard dice with the same odds as regular dice? Sure. You just need to know how to calculate the odds, and how to determine what different numbers could be on the faces to give the same odds. Let's start with some tables. The addition table is one of the first tables learned in school. Here is one way to present an addition table in Mathematica.
Ed Pegg Jr, Scientific Information Editor, Scientific Information Group
Best of Blog

Doing Spy Stuff with Mathematica

I was reading about the IT problems of the recently arrested, alleged Russian spies, and I wondered if they could have managed secret communications better with Mathematica. One of the claims was that they were using digital steganography tools that kept crashing. I wanted to see how quickly I could implement digital image steganography in Mathematica using a method known as "least significant bit insertion". The idea of steganography is to hide messages within other information so that no one notices your communications. The word itself comes from a Latin-Greek combination meaning "covered writing", from earlier physical methods that apparently included tattooing a message on a messenger's head before letting him grow his hair back to hide it. In the case of digital steganography, it is all done in the math.
Jon McLoone, Director, Technical Communication & Strategy
Education & Academic

Mathematica: A Game Changer for Mathematics

Bruce Torrence, PhD, chair of the Department of Mathematics at Randolph-Macon College, says he's engaging his students in mathematics more than ever before thanks to a single Mathematica command. That command is Manipulate. Professor Torrence calls the ability to create instant dynamic interfaces a "real game changer" for helping students understand mathematics. He says, "Once you play with a Manipulate and interact with the sliders and buttons, you really develop your intuition as to how the underlying mechanisms are interacting and working." In this video, Professor Torrence shares an example of how he used Mathematica to turn a previously tedious lesson into a highly compelling, interactive classroom activity.
Wolfram Blog Team
Computation & Analysis

Simulating the World Cup Knockout Stage

The knockout stage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup is about to begin in South Africa. At the time of writing, every team has one group stage match remaining, and most teams still have a chance to finish in the top two places in their group and progress to the knockout stage (see the tournament schedule and group stage standings). There are different approaches to ranking world football teams. The most well known is FIFA's official world rankings, which are derived from points gained and lost in each match according to a heuristic set of rules that generally reward winning against higher-ranked opponents in more-important tournaments. A simple alternative with a more statistical basis is an Elo rating system (described in more detail below). A handy property of Elo rating systems is that they directly provide an estimate of the probability that a given team will perform better than another. We can use Mathematica with that to set up simulations of the knockout stage of the World Cup. This lets us estimate things like the chance of each team winning the tournament. We'll also generate some nice visualizations of the results, such as the following simulated knockout stage (based on the current top two teams in each group):
Andrew Moylan, Technical Content Specialist, Technical Communication and Strategy Group
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