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Presentations from the Wolfram Mathematica Virtual Conference 2012 Now Available

The recent Wolfram Mathematica Virtual Conference was a tremendous success! The free event included two tracks of talks covering applications of Mathematica in industry and research and in education, Q&A with experts, and access to virtual networking. From building graphics and dynamic visualizations to learning creative ways for using the Computable Document Format (CDF) in the classroom, attendees of all experience levels gained new insights to help them get the most out of the Mathematica platform.
Wolfram Blog Team
Best of Blog

Automating xkcd Diagrams: Transforming Serious to Funny

On early Monday morning I noticed an interesting question posted on Mathematica Stack Exchange titled quite innocently "xkcd-style graphs." Due to the popularity of Randall Munroe's xkcd web comic, I expected a bit more than average of about ten or so up-votes, a few bookmarks. Little did I know. Spontaneously emerging viral events are hard to predict, so if you are lucky to catch one, it is fascinating to watch its propagation across the web and the growth of its ranks. In a matter of two days, this post received more than 100,000 views, 200 up-votes, and 150 bookmarks; produced responses and similar posts across other Stack Exchange communities; triggered a small tornado on Twitter; and was discussed on Hacker News and reddit. For convenience, I repeat Amatya's original post and example xkcd image here: "I received an email to which I wanted to respond with a xkcd-style graph, but I couldn't manage it. Everything I drew looked perfect, and I don't have enough command over Plot Legends to have these pieces of text floating around. Any tips on how one can create xkcd-style graphs? Where things look hand-drawn and imprecise. I guess drawing weird curves must be especially hard in Mathematica."
Vitaliy Kaurov, Director of Community Engagement
Education & Academic

3D Charges and Configurations with Sharp Edges

In my last blog post, we looked at various examples of electrostatic potentials and magnetostatic fields. We ended with a rectangular current loop. Electrostatic and magnetostatic potentials for squares, cubes, and cuboids typically contain only elementary functions, but the expressions themselves are often quite large compared with simple systems with radial symmetry. In the following, we will discuss some 3D charge configurations that have sharp edges. Let's start with a charged 2D rectangle in 3D space. Again, the potential is an elementary function that contains a few logarithms.
Michael Trott, Chief Scientist, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Announcements & Events

Mathematica Experts Live: One-Liner Competition—And the Winners Are…

Mathematica users around the world answered our call to prove their programming prowess in our recent Mathematica Experts Live: One-Liner Competition. And once again, we were blown away by what our users did with just 140 characters or less of Mathematica code. Videos from the webcast where we revealed the winner and runners-up are now available in our Screencast & Video Gallery and on YouTube. Check them out to see the creative applications the honorees came up with: from transforming a sphere into a cow to random sound generators to a world capitals quiz to the highly impressive grand prize winner. You're sure to learn some new Mathematica tricks and techniques from each entry.
Wolfram Blog Team
Announcements & Events

Free Wolfram Mathematica Virtual Conference 2012

Get an edge in everything from computer graphics to deploying interactive reports to using Wolfram|Alpha in the classroom. Whether you're new to Mathematica or an expert, the free Wolfram Mathematica Virtual Conference 2012 will help you get the most out of the platform. Two tracks of conference talks cover applications of Mathematica in industry and research and in education. Each talk includes a live Q&A session.
Wolfram Blog Team
Announcements & Events

Computer-Based Math Education Summit 2012

In November 2011 we held the first Computer-Based Math Education Summit in London. Over two days we brought an unprecedented cross-section of people with a stake in STEM education to address the question "In an era of ubiquitous computing, how should we rebuild math education from the ground up, to keep pace with and drive progress in the real world?" Last year's summit was a first glimpse at some of the work from the computer-based math community worldwide. The Computer-Based Math Education Summit 2012, again being held in London, will be tackling more of these issues in a mainstream way. If you want to have a stake in math education in 10 years' time, this summit is unmissable.
Michael Belcher, Marketing Project Coordinator, European Sales
Computation & Analysis

Analyzing Pedometer Data with Mathematica

In Stephen Wolfram's personal analytics blog post, he showed a number of interesting plots of the steps he's recorded on his pedometer over the past two years. Each plot highlighted a different feature of his activity. For example, this daily step distribution makes it clear that Stephen is typically most physically active around noon: In this blog post I'll show you how to analyze your own pedometer data and make cool plots like Stephen's. If you don't have any data, you can use the attached sample data that corresponds to my own physical activity. First we need to import the data and format it appropriately. The data is formatted as pairs of time stamps and step counts in five-minute intervals.
William Sehorn, Senior Reporting Engineer, Corporate Analysis
Products

Model Your Own Medieval Catapult Design

Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram SystemModeler trial. Since my childhood, I have always been impressed by big mechanical structures, especially things that are used for demolition of some kind, like demolition machines (cranes with big metallic balls thrown hard at concrete buildings) or machines for warfare. All kids are by nature intrigued by demolishing, and I guess that some of us never lose that interest. When we grow up, our interest may shift toward understanding the physics behind the machines used for demolition more than the actual demolished result. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to study medieval warfare, and in particular, the mechanical system of a catapult? How should you design your catapult for maximal effect? How far can you hurl a projectile with a given design? What is required to throw a piano? The mechanics behind a catapult are rather simple to describe using ready-made components in Wolfram SystemModeler. The model could be used to fine-tune the design and calculate properties such as the maximum length of a hurl for a specific counterweight.
Peter Aronsson, Wolfram MathCore
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