Hi,

 

I am going to fulfil a lifelong dream and  will embark on a long distance
physics university course in autumn after spending most of my working life
as a professional musician in the abstract world of music. For this
endeavour I have to brush up and recover my long lost maths basics.

After discovering and trying out Mathematica I have purchased the home
version of this amazing program which, after spending some time with it, I
consider to be the swiss knife of everything. 

 

I would like to ask for recommendations about what would be the best way to
use the program for the process of studying and practising maths. Are there
any course books available that would outline a path to be followed in
combination with using Mathematica? I am currently studying Jerry P. King's
"Mathematics in 10 lessons" to get the basics back, but I am a little
overwhelmed by the amount of topics that have to be covered and would
appreciate some recommendations in terms of organizing my studies with the
help of Mathematica.

 

Regards

 

Berthold Hamburger

 

-- 

Berthold Hamburger - Cellist/Spain

Email: behambu@artinso.com

http://www.artinso.com

http://www.artemis.artinso.com

That sounds like a marvelous opportunity! While I don't have a
specific book recommendation, I have found that my pathway to learning
math has been mostly through physics. You may find this true for
yourself as well. I would suggest looking around for a good
introductory physics text that begins with a level of mathematics at
your comfort level. On the other hand, if you want to learn how to
solve mathematical problems with Mathematica, a very good starting
point, and a very fun mathematics book, is Stan Wagon's Mathematica in
Action. I suspect that you will find the math in there approachable.


On Mar 11, 4:33 am, "Berthold Hamburger" <b-hambur...@artinso.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am going to fulfil a lifelong dream and  will embark on a long distan=
ce
> physics university course in autumn after spending most of my working lif=
e
> as a professional musician in the abstract world of music. For this
> endeavour I have to brush up and recover my long lost maths basics.
>
> After discovering and trying out Mathematica I have purchased the home
> version of this amazing program which, after spending some time with it, =
I
> consider to be the swiss knife of everything.
>
> I would like to ask for recommendations about what would be the best way =
to
> use the program for the process of studying and practising maths. Are the=
re
> any course books available that would outline a path to be followed in
> combination with using Mathematica? I am currently studying Jerry P. King=
's
> "Mathematics in 10 lessons" to get the basics back, but I am a little
> overwhelmed by the amount of topics that have to be covered and would
> appreciate some recommendations in terms of organizing my studies with th=
e
> help of Mathematica.
>
> Regards
>
> Berthold Hamburger
>
> --
>
> Berthold Hamburger - Cellist/Spain
>
> Email: beha...@artinso.com
>
> http://www.artinso.com
>
> http://www.artemis.artinso.com

On Mar 11, 3:33 am, "Berthold Hamburger" <b-hambur...@artinso.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am going to fulfil a lifelong dream and  will embark on a long distance
> physics university course in autumn after spending most of my working life
> as a professional musician in the abstract world of music. For this
> endeavour I have to brush up and recover my long lost maths basics.
>
> After discovering and trying out Mathematica I have purchased the home
> version of this amazing program which, after spending some time with it, I
> consider to be the swiss knife of everything.
>
> I would like to ask for recommendations about what would be the best way to
> use the program for the process of studying and practising maths. Are there
> any course books available that would outline a path to be followed in
> combination with using Mathematica? I am currently studying Jerry P. King's
> "Mathematics in 10 lessons" to get the basics back, but I am a little
> overwhelmed by the amount of topics that have to be covered and would
> appreciate some recommendations in terms of organizing my studies with the
> help of Mathematica.
>
> Regards
>
> Berthold Hamburger
>
> --
>
> Berthold Hamburger - Cellist/Spain
>
> Email: beha...@artinso.com
>
> http://www.artinso.com
>
> http://www.artemis.artinso.com

One sugestion
<http://www.amazon.com/Students-Introduction-MATHEMATICA-Handbook-
Precalculus/dp/0521717892/ref=sr_1_8?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299891917&sr=1-8>
If you could tell us what field physics you will be studying perhaps
someone could recommend a book nearer to your area of interest.

Howard

Make use of the various maths lectures on

http://www.khanacademy.org

--David


On Mar 11, 4:33 am, "Berthold Hamburger" <b-hambur...@artinso.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am going to fulfil a lifelong dream and  will embark on a long distance
> physics university course in autumn after spending most of my working life
> as a professional musician in the abstract world of music. For this
> endeavour I have to brush up and recover my long lost maths basics.
>
> After discovering and trying out Mathematica I have purchased the home
> version of this amazing program which, after spending some time with it, I
> consider to be the swiss knife of everything.
>
> I would like to ask for recommendations about what would be the best way to
> use the program for the process of studying and practising maths. Are there
> any course books available that would outline a path to be followed in
> combination with using Mathematica? I am currently studying Jerry P. King's
> "Mathematics in 10 lessons" to get the basics back, but I am a little
> overwhelmed by the amount of topics that have to be covered and would
> appreciate some recommendations in terms of organizing my studies with the
> help of Mathematica.
>
> Regards
>
> Berthold Hamburger
>
> --
>
> Berthold Hamburger - Cellist/Spain
>
> Email: beha...@artinso.com
>
> http://www.artinso.com
>
> http://www.artemis.artinso.com

On Mar 11, 2:33 am, "Berthold Hamburger" <b-hambur...@artinso.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am going to fulfil a lifelong dream and  will embark on a long distance
> physics university course in autumn after spending most of my working life
> as a professional musician in the abstract world of music. For this
> endeavour I have to brush up and recover my long lost maths basics.
>
> After discovering and trying out Mathematica I have purchased the home
> version of this amazing program which, after spending some time with it, I
> consider to be the swiss knife of everything.
>
> I would like to ask for recommendations about what would be the best way to
> use the program for the process of studying and practising maths. Are there
> any course books available that would outline a path to be followed in
> combination with using Mathematica? I am currently studying Jerry P. King's
> "Mathematics in 10 lessons" to get the basics back, but I am a little
> overwhelmed by the amount of topics that have to be covered and would
> appreciate some recommendations in terms of organizing my studies with the
> help of Mathematica.
>
> Regards
>
> Berthold Hamburger
>
> --
>
> Berthold Hamburger - Cellist/Spain
>
> Email: beha...@artinso.com
>
> http://www.artinso.com
>
> http://www.artemis.artinso.com

I have a copy of Mathematica for Physics by Zimmerman, which I quite
like. I see a 2nd edition is available at http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/Books/4539/

I use Mathematica extensively in applied physics. Having said that, I
believe it is a mistake to lean too heavily on Mathematica while
learning physics. It can get you to an answer -- a number or a formula
-- but disguise the meaning and structure of the answer. And in
symbolic manipulation it has no way to recognize and work toward
structure in representation which illuminates the underying principals
of a given formulation.

Physics is an approximate science. Many useful results are obtained by
working a representation into a form in which annoying terms may be
disregarded. For many -- perhaps most -- important problems, this is
the only means of obtaining a closed form solution. Mathematica cannot
do that yet. (But now that Watson has won on Jeopardy, maybe it will
soon.  ;-}  )

Kind regards,

David