WOLFRAM

Computation & Analysis

Deploying and Sharing: Web Scraping with the Wolfram Language, Part 3

So far in this series, I’ve covered the process of extracting, cleaning and structuring data from a website. So what does one do with a structured dataset? Continuing with the Election Atlas data from the previous post, this final entry will talk about how to store your scraped data permanently and deploy results to the web for universal access and sharing.

Computation & Analysis

Trivial Pursuits: Applications and Diversions with the Wolfram Language

Mark Greenberg is a retired educator and contributor to the Tech-Based Teaching blog, which explores the intersections between computational thinking, edtech and learning. He recounts his experience adapting old game code using the Wolfram Language and deployment through the Wolfram Cloud.

Chicken Scratch is an academic trivia game that I originally coded about 20 years ago. At the time I was the Academic Decathlon coach of a large urban high school, and I needed a fun way for my students to remember thousands of factoids for the Academic Decathlon competitions. The game turned out to be beneficial to our team, and so popular that other teams asked to buy it from us. I refreshed the questions each year and continued holding Chicken Scratch tournaments at the next two schools I worked in.

Education & Academic

The Story of Spikey

Spikeys Everywhere We call it “Spikey”, and in my life today, it’s everywhere: It comes from a 3D object—a polyhedron that’s called a rhombic hexecontahedron: But what is its story, and how did we come to adopt it as our symbol?

Products

’Tis the Season: Reflective Ornaments, Singing Trees & More from Wolfram Community

Wolfram Community continues to grow with innovative projects from Wolfram technology aficionados—our total number of members having recently passed 20,000! Deck the halls with these shiny new examples of the content making our tech-oriented social network thrive, and be sure to post your own Wolfram technology–based projects as well.
Education & Academic

The Computational Classroom: Easy Ways to Introduce Computational Thinking into Your Lessons

A version of this post was originally published on the Tech-Based Teaching blog as “Computational Lesson-Planning: Easy Ways to Introduce Computational Thinking into Your Lessons.” Tech-Based Teaching explores the intersections between computational thinking, edtech and learning. Sometimes a syllabus is set in stone. You’ve got to cover X, Y and Z, and no amount of reworking or shifting assignments around can change that. Other factors can play a role too: limited time, limited resources or even a bit of nervousness at trying something new. But what if you’d like to introduce some new ideas into your lessons—ideas like digital citizenship or computational thinking? Introducing computational thinking to fields that are not traditionally part of STEM can sometimes be a challenge, so feel free to share this journey with your children's teachers, friends and colleagues.
Computation & Analysis

Deep Learning and Computer Vision: Converting Models for the Wolfram Neural Net Repository

Julian Francis, a longtime user of the Wolfram Language, contacted us with a potential submission for the Wolfram Neural Net Repository. The Wolfram Neural Net Repository consists of models that researchers at Wolfram have either trained in house or converted from the original code source, curated, thoroughly tested and finally have rendered the output in a very rich computable knowledge format. Julian was our very first user to go through the process of converting and testing the nets.

We thought it would be interesting to interview him on the entire process of converting the models for the repository so that he could share his experiences and future plans to inspire others.
Education & Academic

Interning at Wolfram: My Regeneration as a Theoretical Scientist

How does it feel to be an intern at Wolfram?

Most undergraduate college students chase opportunities for internships in New York, Miami, Seattle and particularly San Francisco at very young but large high-tech companies like Uber, Pinterest, Quora, Expedia and similar internet companies. These companies offer the best salaries, perks, bosses, coworkers, catered lunches and other luxurious amenities available in such large cities. You would seldom hear about any of these people pursuing opportunities in small, lesser-known towns like Ames, Iowa, or Laramie, Wyoming—and Champaign, Illinois, where Wolfram Research is based, is one of those smaller towns.

Many students want to go into computer science, as it’s such a rapidly developing field. They especially want to work in those companies on the West Coast. If you’re in a different field, like natural science, you might think there’s nothing beyond on-campus research for work experience. At Wolfram Research, though, there is.

Education & Academic

Computation + Literature in High School: Doctoral-Level Digital Humanities

Thanks to the Wolfram Language, English teacher Peter Nilsson is empowering his students with computational methods in literature, history, geography and a range of other non-STEM fields. Working with a group of other teachers at Deerfield Academy, he developed Distant Reading: an innovative course for introducing high-level digital humanities concepts to high-school students. Throughout the course, students learn in-demand coding skills and data science techniques while also finding creative ways to apply computational thinking to real-world topics that interest them.

In this video, Nilsson describes how the built-in knowledge, broad subject coverage and intuitive coding workflow of the Wolfram Language were crucial to the success of his course: