We have been studying Mathematica for a variety of reasons. We began by thinking of
Mathematica as a numerical calculator, and studied the consequences of its allowing
the user to specify the number of significant digits to use when calculating.
We continued by thinking of Mathematica as a ``symbolic calculator,'' and saw that
Mathematica can compute with symbols as easily as it can with numbers. More
recently, we have been using Mathematica as a tool for scientific visualization by
exploiting its graphing and animation capabilities.
Another important reason that we have chosen to study Mathematica, however, is that
it is a programming language. It is not a traditional programming language
like C or Fortran, but it is a programming language nonetheless.
This is the last lesson that is devoted entirely to Mathematica. We are about to
turn our attention to the problem of writing programs in C and Fortran. As we
do this, you will come to appreciate that much of what you have learned about
Mathematica, and much of what you have experienced while using Mathematica, will make it
easier for you to learn C and Fortran in the coming weeks.
Before leaving Mathematica behind, we also want to show you a few more aspects of
Mathematica that we have not previously covered. It is possible to use Mathematica in a
way that is almost identical to the way that C and Fortran are used. Studying
these aspects of Mathematica will give you a good head start towards understanding
the equivalent aspects of C and Fortran.
We stress at the outset, however, that we do not expect you to become expert
(or even competent) at using these new aspects of Mathematica. We are introducing
them primarily so that what you are about to see in the context of C and
Fortran will be familiar.