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 pandemic has postponed or canceled a lot of things this year, but luckily learning isn’t one of them. Check out these picks for new Wolfram Language books that will help you explore new software, calculus, engineering and more from the comfort of home.
Our annual Wolfram Technology Conference took place October 6–9, and along with it the 10th annual Wolfram Innovator Award Ceremony. This year, Stephen Wolfram recognized 13 outstanding individuals from around the globe for their significant work using the Wolfram Language across fields and disciplines.
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.
September 24 marked the release of the third edition of one of our most successful and widespread teaching tools: Cliff Hastings, Kelvin Mischo and Michael Morrison’s debut book, Hands-on Start to Wolfram Mathematica and Programming with the Wolfram Language. As the publishing assistant at Wolfram Research, I’ve spent the past few weeks working with the authors to get this new version ready to publish. As we did with the second-edition release, I’ll let Cliff and Kelvin tell us a bit about what’s new in the third edition, why Hands-on Start is so successful and what’s on the horizon (Hands-on Start to Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition!).
Our second year of the Wolfram Data Science Boot Camp (and the first fully virtual edition) wrapped at the end of July. After completing final project assessments last week and issuing certificates, we can confidently say it was a success! Wolfram U mentors helped dozens of budding data scientists learn the multiparadigm approach and develop valuable skills in analysis, visualization, interface construction and more. Campers collaborated on projects of their own design, earning certifications along the way.
We’re proud of everyone who participated, and their efforts deserve some recognition! So without further ado, here’s a quick recap: how we ran the camp, what kinds of projects we saw and the lowdown on our new Level II Certification program.
A few months before I accepted a Wolfram Research internship—around March—I was very fearful, and so was the majority of the world. We knew very little about the novel coronavirus, and the data was just not robust. In addition to the limited data we had, the scientific process necessarily takes time, so even that was not used to its full extent. In a world where not enough data can quickly become data overload, the question didn’t seem to be finding more data, but rather how can one extract useful and meaningful information from the available data?
A worldwide pandemic is definitely stressful, but a worldwide pandemic without accessible and computable information is much more so. Using Wolfram technologies in coordination with several internal teams, I created a Wolfram U course called COVID-19 Data Analysis and Visualization to try and cut through the informational fog and find some clarity. I saw this course as one that gives power to everyone to be able to look at data and gain insight. After all, data is knowledge, and knowledge is power.
In March, my work life changed dramatically, as it did for many around the world. After working in an office environment for almost 25 years, I was told that I needed to work from home for the first time. So I took my laptop, power cord and extra battery home with the expectation that I’d be there for one to two weeks. The first couple of days were a mad dash with our IT department to ensure my VPN, softphone and main tools were set up correctly for remote work. They were great, and for the most part, I was working at 90% right away. The experience opened my eyes, as many of my sales employees work remotely, so I learned a lot about the positives (and, of course, the negatives) they often experience that I may not have appreciated in the past.