Introduction to Mathematica By Jason Gregersen To Get Started: Go to the website: https://mtu.instructure.com/courses/1108045/ Open Mathematica from your desktop My name is Jason Gregersen and I run a Mathematica based Calculus Lab at Michigan Technological University. We are a small but respected Engineering school in the upper peninsula of Michigan. We run three core Calculus courses at MTU, (I, II, III) Attached to each of these courses is a one credit lab where we teach our students how to use Mathematica and then use it to extend their understanding of Calculus as well as their ability to use it. Our feeling is that using this tool in those courses adds creativity and authenticity. It provides a way for the students to explore ideas on their own as well as providing them an industry level computational tool. Not only that but because of the incredible breadth of the Wolfram language, once students understand the basic coding structure they can really use their knowledge to do powerful things in almost any field. I am getting exciting….

Goals In this workshop you will learn: How to use Mathematica How and why we teach Mathematica to our students The power of and breadth of the Wolfram language. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEcuVR2vHwM

Introduction to Mathematica Cells Evaluation Storing variables and defining functions Plotting Manipulate And more …… Help, syntax rules,

Teaching Calculus with Mathematica Lab content can be broken down into three types: Functionality: we teach them code to compute things they need to compute. Exporatory: we provide computational exercises that guide them to some realization. Visualization: We provide code, or instructions for code to visually represent and important concept Let’s look at some examples.

Numerical Integration Convergence

Why we teach Mathematica Relatively easy to get started with and work with Symbolically feels like familiar math Visually stunning (wolfram demonstrations) It is a real tool….. Allows students a language to program with And .. Image processing, data set, raspberry pi Symbolically looks like familiar math

Current Student Projects Pi programming 3D printing Machine Learning And ….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P9HqHVPeik The point here isn’t to do all these projects, but that we are giving students a tool not just for Calculus, but rather an industry level computational tool that they can use to explore a 1000 different personal interests.

Thank your Time (Please use the app to provide feedback) Jason Gregersen jdgreger@mtu.edu