Reviewer Manoj
Rengarajan holds a Master of Financial Engineering - University of
California, Berkeley and he works in the investment management
industry and specializes in providing economic and investment outlook
and strategy for global equity and government bond markets. He has an
educational background in financial engineering, business, and
engineering, and professional interests include business,
finance, economics, technology and related areas.
Mathematica is a scientific programming environment which provides tools for quantitative problem solving in a broad range of areas including physical sciences, engineering, social science and finance.
Author: Sal Mangano
Publisher: O’Reilly
ISBN:
978-0596520991
Click Here To Purchase the Mathematica Cookbook
Mathematica is a scientific programming environment
which provides tools for quantitative problem solving in a broad
range of areas including physical sciences, engineering, social
science and finance.
The Mathematica Cookbook should appeal to a
broad range of professionals who are interested in problem solving
areas including engineering, science, financial engineering, and not
to mention mathematics and statistics.
In the first part of the
book, there are cases that highlight the basic features of the
language including numerics, efficient programming, data structures,
string manipulation and graphics.
The books starts with the basics
of numerics including the representation and the display formats in
Mathematica. Throughout the book, there is an emphasis on the core
principles of problem solving with Mathematica.
Functional
programming is the core paradigm of working in the Mathematica
environment. There are several cases that demonstrate how to
implement efficient and elegant programs in this system.
Basic
data structures such as lists and matrices and how to manipulate and
work with them efficiently are show next with several examples. This
is followed by several cases which highlight the powerful and
essential pattern matching and replacement facilities in
Mathematica.
Typical functions for string manipulation and regular
expression based transformations are followed by graphics
functionalities which are closely integrated with the development
environment. Graphics functionalities are useful for both
presentation as well as for understanding the data. Visualization and
interaction capabilities of 3D graphics are brought out
excellently.
In the second part of the book, the emphasis is
on applications in different domains in which Mathematica offers
significant problem solving capabilities. Starting with highlights
about the native support for transforming images programatically, the
book gives deeper insights into the algorithms. Similarly, there are
very interesting cases on functions to play sound notes, importing
music files and analyzing them.
One of the strongest areas of
Mathematica is symbolic math. The book brings out the strength of the
platform very well in algebraic manipulations and solutions to
equations. Standard statistical capabilities including measures,
probability distributions, data fitting, interpolations, and
stochastic simulations are also highlighted effectively.
Examples
in applied math showcase high level problem solving in physics,
chemistry, biology and engineering. There is a separate chapter on
problem solving for financial engineering which details the various
numerical techniques for working with fixed income and derivative
securities.
Finally, the third part of the book focuses on special
topics for using the software. This includes highlighting the dynamic
interactivity of the software, parallel processing features,
integrating Mathematica to databases and other programming languages,
and tips for performance and organizing projects.
The Mathematica Cookbook is a comprehensive source of solid solutions which focuses
on highlighting the key capabilities of the language, domains in
which the tool can be used and using the tool with greater
efficiency. Thus, the book is strongly recommended both for a novice
as well as a more experienced user.
Click Here To Purchase the Mathematica Cookbook