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Announcements & Events

Mathematica Online Now in Full Release

If you have recently visited Mathematica Online, the cloud version of our flagship software, you may have noticed something missing. That's right---we dropped the "BETA" tag, and I am pleased to announce that we have a product we can proudly call release ready. It has been a long road from when we debuted the Wolfram Cloud to where we are today; we have made some really great progress toward bringing to the cloud the kind of experience you are used to on the desktop---and enabling you to seamlessly work and share documents across your desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. One of the benefits of developing software in the cloud is the ability to constantly make updates and improvements, and every couple of weeks we have been able to add updates to deliver increased speed, increased stability, and increased usability. Regular users have probably noticed and been pleasantly surprised, I hope, by all that we have been doing to upgrade the cloud, but for those of you who haven't dropped by in a while, let me tell you a little more about some of those improvements.
Andrew de Laix, Director of Distributed Systems Engineering
Education & Academic

On the Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO

Earlier today at a press conference held at the National Science Foundation headquarters in Washington, DC, it was announced that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed the first detection of a gravitational wave. The image reproduced below shows the signal read off from the Hanford, Washington, LIGO installation. The same signal could be seen in the data from the Livingston, Louisiana, site as well. While this signal may not seem like much, it is one of the most important scientific discoveries of our lifetime.

B. P. Abbott et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 (2016)

Jason Grigsby, Wolfram Technology Engineer, Wolfram Technology Group
Computation & Analysis

What Are the Odds?

"What are the odds?" This phrase is often tossed around to point out seemingly coincidental occurrences, and it's normally intended as a rhetorical question. Most people won't even wager a guess; they know that the implied answer is usually "very slim." However, I always find myself fascinated by this question. I like to think about the events leading up to a situation and what sorts of unseen mechanisms might be at work. I interpret the question as a challenge, an exciting topic worthy of discussion. In some cases the odds may seem incalculable---and I'll admit it's not always easy. However, a quick investigation of the surrounding mathematics can give you a lot of insight. Hopefully after reading this post, you'll have a better answer the next time someone asks, "What are the odds?"
Brian Wood, Technical Communications & Outreach Manager
Computation & Analysis

A Mathematical Snowstorm, or How I Survived a Blizzard of Koch-like Snowflakes

When I hear about something like January's United States blizzard, I remember the day I was hit by the discovery of an infinitely large family of Koch-like snowflakes. The Koch snowflake (shown below) is a popular mathematical curve and one of the earliest fractal curves to have been described. It's easy to understand because you can construct it by starting with a regular hexagon, removing the inner third of each side, building an equilateral triangle at the location where the side was removed, and then repeating the process indefinitely: If you isolate the hexagon's lower side in the process above you'll get the Koch curve, described in a 1904 paper by Helge von Koch (1870--1924). It has a long history that goes back way before the age of computer graphics. See, for example, this handmade drawing by the French mathematician Paul Lévy (1886--1971):
Bernat Espigulé-Pons, OSW Operations
Announcements & Events

Launching the Wolfram Open Cloud: Open Access to the Wolfram Language

Note added 07/31/20: Some information regarding Wolfram Cloud products described in this post may be outdated. Please visit https://www.wolfram.com/cloud to learn more. Six and a half years ago we put Wolfram|Alpha and the sophisticated computational knowledge it delivers out free on the web for anyone in the world to use. Now we’re launching the Wolfram […]

Stephen Wolfram
Education & Academic

Announcing Wolfram Programming Lab

I’m excited today to be able to announce the launch of Wolfram Programming Lab—an environment for anyone to learn programming and computational thinking through the Wolfram Language. You can run Wolfram Programming Lab through a web browser, as well as natively on desktop systems (Mac, Windows, Linux).

Stephen Wolfram
Education & Academic

Building Hydraulics Applications with Wolfram SystemModeler

Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram SystemModeler trial. Wolfram SystemModeler is a tool for multidomain analysis. One area with many multidomain applications is hydraulics: fluid power systems. Fluid power is one of three main methods of transmitting power. The other two are mechanical transmission, via gears and shafts, and electrical transmission, via wires. In SystemModeler, all three can be used at the same time without any restrictions or simplification. This blog describes how the SystemModeler hydraulic library can be used in education, but the focus is not only on the hydraulic part. The idea is also to show how to build up an interesting, real application where hydraulics play an essential role. In the model it is then possible to study the effects of filter locations, choose valves, adjust settings, study different oil grades, etc. This post may also give ideas to hydraulic engineers used to working with conventional software as to what more can be done with SystemModeler compared to the standard software.
Håkan Wettergren, Applications Engineer, SystemModeler (MathCore)
Education & Academic

New Wolfram Technologies Books Reach a Global Audience

As this new year begins and the books keep rolling in, we are happy to share with you an exciting new selection of texts featuring Wolfram technologies. If you're looking for a New Year's resolution for 2016, why not consider learning how to use Mathematica or the Wolfram Language? In this post are several books for beginners in English, German, and Japanese, as well as more advanced books for those who are looking to sharpen their skills.
Jenna Giuffrida, Content Administrator, Technical Communications and Strategy Group
Education & Academic

New in the Wolfram Language: Symbolic PDEs

Partial differential equations (PDEs) play a vital role in mathematics and its applications. They can be used to model real-world phenomena such as the vibrations of a stretched string, the flow of heat in a bar, or the change in values of financial options. My aim in writing this post is to give you a brief glimpse into the fascinating world of PDEs using the improvements for boundary value problems in DSolve and the new DEigensystem function in Version 10.3 of the Wolfram Language. The history of PDEs goes back to the works of famous eighteenth-century mathematicians such as Euler, d'Alembert, and Laplace, but the development of this field has continued unabated during the last three centuries. I have, therefore, chosen examples of both classical as well as modern PDEs in order to give you a taste of this vast and beautiful subject.
Devendra Kapadia, Manager of Calculus and Algebra, Algorithms R&D
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