Educational Materials

Introduction to Mathematica for High School Math (for Students and Teachers) #2

Ruth Dover

Author

Ruth Dover

Title

Introduction to Mathematica for High School Math (for Students and Teachers) #2

Description

Introduction to Mathematica for High School Math

Tutorial 2: Intro to Palettes

R. Dover, IMSA

This tutorial will show you a bit of the versatility of using palettes. And we will review some of the ideas from the first tutorial. Before that, it is important to understand that commands may be entered in a variety of ways. This flexibility is one of the major advantages of Mathematica® for many people. Many experienced users work with a combination of palettes, keystrokes and "longhand," for lack of a better word. (We will consider keystrokes for typesetting in a later tutorial.)

First, from the Palettes menu, choose Classroom Assistant. Please set your desktop so that the palette is adjacent to the Mathematica window, but not overlapping.

Basic Typesetting

Open the Calculator and Basic Commands sections. Start a new cell following this one. From Basic Commands (and under the

tab), click N. Then from the Calculator section, choose



. Fill in the placeholder with some number and execute the cell.

Now we can create a summation similar to the example in Tutorial 1. Get ready for a new cell following. Under Basic Commands, choose the third button for calculus (with a

, integral sign and sigma) and choose the

. Fill in the blue box first with

. Use Tab to move to subsequent boxes. Let

start at 1. For the upper limit of summation, under Basic Commands, under the



tab, choose

∞

. For the expression itself, type 1, then click



under Calculator. Tab to the denominator, type

and then select



and fill in the 2 or the exponent. (Or try 3 or 4 if you wish.)

OK, hopefully you get the idea. Click what you want and fill in the placeholders, using Tab to move from one to another. Part of the issue is finding the command or function or number you want, but that will come. Also, there are keystrokes for the characters and symbols. These may be found by hovering your cursor over the desired symbol. And if you are sufficiently comfortable with the syntax, typing is often quicker!

Another note: The expression

may be entered with the palette or keystrokes (next tutorial!) or it may be entered just by typing:

2^5+12/7+Sqrt[18]

. Similarly, the summation could be written as

Sum[1/k^2,{k,1,Infinity}]

. Whatever is convenient.

Special Numbers

Special numbers may be entered in multiple ways. Pi may be spelled out or the symbol

may be obtained from the palette. "Pi" is capitalized since it is built into Mathematica.

Similarly, other special numbers may be written with a capital letter or with a special character from the palette. For example,

e≈2.718

may be identified as



from the palette. The complex number

-1

may be written as

or as



. Infinity or

∞

. Often, there are options.

Algebra, Etc.

We saw some algebraic commands in the first tutorial. Now, we will look at them through the palette. Under Basic Commands, choose the second button,

y=x

In a cell following, click Expand, and then type (x+y)^50. Or use the palette to form the superscript.

Explore more of the buttons under Basic Commands to see what is there. We will return to

Solve

Plot

and many of these commands later in much more detail.

Cite this as: Ruth Dover, "Introduction to Mathematica for High School Math (for Students and Teachers) #2" from the Notebook Archive (2021), https://notebookarchive.org/2021-09-6h1omg2