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News, Views & Insights

Education & Academic

The Student Perspective: Wolfram Summer School 2022

Learn more and stay informed about Wolfram Summer School!
For the past 20 years, Stephen Wolfram has hosted the annual Wolfram Summer School: four weeks of intensive mentorship and teamwork and the completion of computational and research projects on a variety of topics, ranging from pure math to humanities, engineering, physics and more. Students from all over the world participate in Socratic classroom discussions, lecture series, casual networking events and coding sessions to help them design and complete original projects.
Mads Bahrami, Academic Innovation Support
Current Events & History

Cheers! A Computational Exploration of Alcoholic Beverages with the Wolfram Language

For 10 thousand years, humans have been using fermentation to produce beverages for pleasure, rituals and healing. In ancient Greece, honey was fermented to produce mead. Today, popular sources of beverage fermentation are grains, grapes, berries and rice. The science of fermentation—known as zymology (or zymurgy)—is a fascinating blend of chemistry, biology, history and geography. The Wolfram Language now brings a new dimension to the study of alcoholic beverages through an extensive dataset ready to be explored and analyzed.
Isabel Skidmore, Food Data Consultant
Announcements & Events

Unlocking New Computational Worlds with Textbooks Featuring Wolfram Technologies Calculus, Chemical Engineering, Natural Resource Economics and Beyond!

Technology is an increasingly important part of education, not just for pedagogical purposes, but also as a bridge to the real-world work students will experience as they enter nearly any given industry beyond the classroom. Mathematica’s ease of use and the flexibility of the Wolfram Language feature in several recent textbooks, ranging from within applied mathematics, such as differential equations, to physical sciences like chemical engineering. We’re pleased to share our conversations with two authors whose works cover that range, and to highlight other recent releases featuring Wolfram technology.
Stella Vallon, Document & Media Systems
Education & Academic

Wolfram|Alpha Pro Teaches Step-by-Step Arithmetic for All Grade Levels

In grade school, long arithmetic is considered a foundational math skill. In the past several decades in the United States, long arithmetic has traditionally been introduced between first and fifth grade, and remains crucial for students of all ages. The Common Core State Standards for mathematics indicate that first-grade students should learn how to add “a two-digit number and a one-digit number.” By second grade, students “add and subtract within 1000” and, in particular, “relate the strategy to a written method.” In third grade, multiplication by powers of 10 is introduced, and by fourth grade students are tasked to “use place value understanding and properties of operations to perform multi-digit arithmetic,” including multiplication and division. A fifth grader will not only be expected to “fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm,” but also “add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals.”
AnneMarie Torresen, Math Developer, Wolfram|Alpha Math Content
Education & Academic

Splitting a Point with Mathematica and MathTensor: A Mathematica Memoir

In the past few years, there have been many significant anniversaries in the Mathematica world. This has made me think about my long personal history working with all things Mathematica. Here I present an account of how I got involved with this world, developed my part of it and continue to use it. I show what I think is a unique application that differs from the other thousands of applications in Mathematica or the Wolfram Language presented on the various Wolfram Research websites, Wolfram Community and elsewhere. Finally, I attempt to describe the physics of what I do. The beginning historical part with much name-dropping can be skipped for those who want to read only about technical or physics issues.
Steven Christensen, Document & Media Systems
Education & Academic

Fractional Calculus in Wolfram Language 13.1

What is the half-derivative of x?

Fractional calculus studies the extension of derivatives and integrals to such fractional orders, along with methods of solving differential equations involving these fractional-order derivatives and integrals. This branch is becoming more and more popular in fluid dynamics, control theory, signal processing and other areas. Realizing the importance and potential of this topic, we have added support for fractional derivatives and integrals in the recent release of Version 13.1 of the Wolfram Language.
Tigran Ishkhanyan, Algorithms R&D
Education & Academic

Discrete-Time Systems to FIR Filter Design: Explore Signal Processing in the New MOOC from Wolfram U

Recognizing the importance of the topics and the powerful capabilities in the Wolfram Language for signal processing, we set out to develop a fully interactive course about signal and system processing to make the subject accessible to a wide audience. After sharing and reviewing the course materials, notes and experiences we’ve collected from university undergraduate-level courses over many years, this resulting Wolfram U course represents the collaborative efforts of two principal authors, Mariusz Jankowski and Leila Fuladi, and a team of knowledgeable staff. It is our great pleasure to introduce to you the new, free, interactive course Signals, Systems and Signal Processing, which we hope will help you understand and master this difficult but tremendously important and exciting subject.
Mariusz Jankowski, Algorithms R&D Leila Fuladi, Technical Content Developer, Sound & Vision
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