Hints for Mathematica Users

1. Make sure that you have access to the program Mathematica and that the program works well on your computer.

2. Download the notebook. test.nb, open it with Mathematica and proceed as written there. The notebook contains a collection of Timing tests of simple numerical as well as graphical built-in Mathematica functions. You may compare the times the program needs on your computer with earlier results minuted in the notebook. To learn working with Mathematica continue the notebook according to your interests, or start a new notebook. Select Help and then Virtual Book from the menu and study the offered chapters.

3. If you downloaded one of my notebooks from this website and opened it first time, look wether there is at the beginning a section named “Preparation” or “Initialization”. Follow exactly the hints written there. As a rule, most of the larger notebooks need some additional files, mostly Mathematica Packages. Usually they are bundled together with the notebook in the tgz- or zip-file you downloaded. The main point is that these additional files mus be contained in a directory of the $Path, the list of directories in which Mathematica searches for needed files.

4. It is recommended to study the contents of the packages. To this aim some of the notebooks contain subsections titled “The Usages”; read the usages of the functions defined in the packages. The packages can be opened in Mathematica or in a text editor. Only be careful if you are going to change them. Always save an original copy, Changing a Mathematica package can made it completely useless, if an error appeared!