WOLFRAM

Education & Academic

Stay Connected with Wolfram Study Group Sessions, Livestreams and More

Remote work. Distance learning. Virtual events. These terms are becoming more commonplace as quarantines and stay-at-home orders continue and folks practice social distancing. While brainstorming how best to contribute to our customers around the world during these unusual times, we’ve generated a ton of data resources, analytics, free access to technology and much more.

However, these resources were still missing a deeper level of collaboration and interaction—the simple power of people coming together to connect, work and learn. With that in mind, here are some more group-oriented offerings to help keep you connected and in touch with one another, even in the new landscape of an almost entirely virtual world.

Announcements & Events

What’s New with the Wolfram Documentation Center

The Wolfram Language is the culmination of decades of effort, supporting all our products. One reason the Wolfram Language is so easy to use is the Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center—unique in that it contains reference information along with tens of thousands of examples that can be edited and run in place (or quickly copied from the web to your notebook).

We recently released Version 12.1 of the Wolfram Language, and with it, a number of new documentation features and page types. With every release, you’ll find an increasing scope of functionality, examples and use cases documented for different fields and applications, presented with an intuitive, user-friendly design.

Best of Blog

Bring the Classroom Home with Free Projects, Computational Explorations and Other Resources

Communities the world over are bracing themselves for impact from the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Many school districts in particular have already suspended sessions for several weeks to come—and understandably, parents and educators feel anxious about navigating at-home learning (among the variety of other concerns brought about by a pandemic!).

Professionally, a large part of what I do at Wolfram involves working with educators, students and organizations, and empowering them with the technology to think computationally. I know of several parents with older kids who are now at home, enrolled in schools that are not completely prepared to provide online instruction. While the internet is awash with curricula, it can be a challenging task to assess the quality, relevance and usefulness of each course, given the amount of what is out there.

For decades now at Wolfram, we’ve been committed to the creation of cutting-edge technology and resources for classrooms. Let’s take a look at our wealth of free online resources for quality education while at home.
Current Events & History

Remote Work, Remote Learning: Battle Tested with Wolfram

Given the current discussion of quarantines, sick leave and controlling community outbreaks, many people around the world have been prompted to wonder “Can my business run with a remote workforce?” or “Can my students learn and be productive without coming into the classroom?” The answer, we’ve found, is yes—and we’ve got decades of experience as a largely remote company to guide you, your school, government lab, university or company as you make the understandably challenging transition to working remotely.

Education & Academic

Exploring the Enigmatic Star, Eta Carinae

One of the most enigmatic stars in our galaxy is η Carinae (Eta Carinae). However, in its first recorded observation several hundred years ago, Eta Carinae was a star of little note. Since then, it has become a source of astronomical interest due to dramatic brightness variations, which at one time made it the second-brightest star in the sky. In this post, we’ll investigate the star using the Wolfram Language and the Wolfram Function Repository to discover why it’s changed in such a relatively short period of time, both in its appearance and in our interest in it.
Computation & Analysis

Wolfram Function Repository Highlights: From Country Borders to Bird Speech Bubbles

In June 2019, Stephen Wolfram announced the Wolfram Function Repository, a curated repository of functions that can be employed immediately in the Wolfram Language. Since then, the Repository has grown to include more than 1,000 functions in over 20 categories.

Functions included in the Repository range from those that are more general and utilitarian in nature to others with very specific applications. As with all Wolfram Language functions, Repository documentation pages contain examples showing how to use the functions. We’re featuring a few of the functions submitted to the Repository so far that showcase the variety of functions our users have built.

Education & Academic

15 Ways Wolfram|Alpha Can Help with Your Classes

We all know Wolfram|Alpha is great for solving calculations and math problems, but not everyone knows about the full breadth of useful data it provides. I entered college as a biology major and was quickly overwhelmed with the amount of information I had to memorize. Class lectures moved at a fast pace, and often my notes had gaps in them where I hadn’t finished writing down what the professor was saying before she moved on. I was up late at night making flashcards for tests and searching desperately through Yahoo! Answers, trying to find information like what exactly the alimentary system does (hint: it “functions in food ingestion and digestion; absorption of water and nutrients; secretion of water, acids, enzymes, buffers and salts; waste excretion; and energy storage”—thanks, Wolfram|Alpha!).

Thinking back on those late-night study sessions, I would have saved a lot of time if I had properly used Wolfram|Alpha as a study tool. Because I was a biology major, many of the areas in which I most frequently sought information were related to scientific fields such as chemistry, but Wolfram|Alpha can be a valuable resource in so many more areas. Here are 15 applications of Wolfram|Alpha in topics beyond mathematics. I hope you will find these to be useful both inside and outside the classroom!