News, Views & Insights
Today we celebrate the arrival of the 36th (x.x) version of the Wolfram Language and Mathematica: Version 14.1. We’ve been doing this since 1986: continually inventing new ideas and implementing them in our larger and larger tower of technology. And it’s always very satisfying to be able to deliver our latest achievements to the world.
Today we celebrate a new waypoint on our journey of nearly four decades with the release of Version 14.0 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica. Over the two years since we released Version 13.0 we’ve been steadily delivering the fruits of our research and development in .1 releases every six months. Today we’re aggregating these—and more—into Version 14.0.
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:
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f = SinhIntegral[
LogisticSigmoid[
ScorerHi[Tanh[AiryAi[HermiteH[-(1/2), x] - x + 1]]]]];
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In 2020, Melbourne, Australia, had a 112-day lockdown of the entire city to help stop the spread of COVID-19. The wearing of masks was mandatory and we were limited to one hour a day of outside activity. Otherwise, we were stuck in our homes. This gave me lots of time to look into interesting problems I’d been putting off for years.
I was inspired by a YouTube video by David Oranchak, which looked at the Zodiac Killer’s 340-character cipher (Z340), which is pictured below. This cipher is considered one of the holy grails of cryptography, as at the time the cipher had resisted attacks for 50 years, so any attempts to find a solution were truly a moonshot.
Wolfram Language users make up an incredibly diverse community. People from all around the globe use Wolfram technologies in a variety of fields and industries. High-school and college students begin to use the Wolfram Language in all types of classes as well as for their own projects, and educators at all institutional levels use Wolfram products to prepare for and teach courses—at the world’s top 200 universities and beyond.
We’ve rounded up some of our users’ recently published books, and were honored to speak with two authors about their projects.Association has become one of the most commonly used symbols for developers working with any kind of data since it was introduced in Version 10 of the Wolfram Language in 2014. While there are many built-in tools for working with an Association, developers also made many tools themselves as they modernized their code. Now many of those tools have found their way into the Wolfram Function Repository. Here I’ll highlight some of my favorites and show how they compare to built-in Wolfram Language functions.
As CEO of Wolfram Blockchain Labs (WBL), I think one of the most exciting parts of my job is collaborating with other leaders in the blockchain space to expand tools for developers and business use cases. For several years now, we’ve been adding a steady stream of blockchain functionality into the Wolfram Language to enable development of knowledge-based distributed applications and computational contracts. You may have noticed the growing number of popular blockchains (ARK, Bitcoin, bloxberg, Cardano, Ethereum, MultiChain...) partnering with us and integrating into our platform. It’s already led to some cool explorations, and we have a lot more in the pipeline.
Today, WBL is happy to announce its latest such collaboration, a partnership with TQ Tezos. That includes Tezos blockchain integration in the Wolfram Language, which is great news for smart contract developers and enthusiasts. But that’s just the beginning. Our long-term plans include a lot of big ideas that we think everyone will be excited about!
I enjoy turning mathematical concepts into wearable pieces of art. That’s the idea behind my business, Hanusa Design. I make unique products that feature striking designs inspired by the beauty and precision of mathematics. These pieces are created using the range of functionality in the Wolfram Language. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we recently launched Spikey earrings in the Wolfram Store, which are available in rose gold–plated brass and red nylon. In this blog, I’ll give a look under the hood and discuss how an idea becomes a product through the Wolfram Language.
Math is one of the main things that deters students from wanting to learn more about chemistry. Being a chemical engineering student, I understand this, especially for students who just have to get chemistry out of the way as a general education requirement. Essentially, step-by-step solutions are like your own on-demand math tutor: in addition to calculating the answer, Wolfram|Alpha shows you how it got there. Here are six important math skills that you will definitely use on a regular basis in your chemistry class and how they relate to different chemistry concepts.
Over a thousand new individual Wolfram Certifications were awarded in 2020 since the launch of new and updated online interactive courses and Daily Study Groups from Wolfram U. Students and professionals around the world have developed their skills and demonstrated proficiency in Wolfram technologies, as well as several topic-specific applications. We're excited to now offer expanded achievement opportunities for certification in more areas and more levels.