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Mathematica Navigator: Mathematics, Statistics, and Graphics, Second Edition | 
 enlarge | Author: Heikki Ruskeepaa
Publisher: Academic Press
Category: Book
List Price: $78.95
Buy New: $64.71
You Save: $14.24 (18%)
New (17) Used (4) from $64.71
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 288682
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 844
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 012603642X
Dewey Decimal Number: 510.2855
EAN: 9780126036428
ASIN: 012603642X
Publication Date: February 18, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Mathematica Navigator is the only book you need to understand and use the new Mathematica. Part tutorial and part handbook, this updated guidebook provides a thorough introduction to the software plus practical information and tips for using Mathematica on a daily basis to solve mathematical problems. The book emphasizes the use of graphics, methods of applied mathematics and statistics, and programming.
While no previous experience with Mathematica is required, most chapters also include advanced material so that the book will be a valuable resource for beginners and experienced users. You'll want to keep it close by your computer for easy reference.
Based on recent releases of Mathematica
With the CD-ROM, the whole book can be installed into the help system of Mathematica
Most chapters, while starting from the basics, go up to advanced topics
Studies several real-life data sets
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Excellent book, but it needs an update for version 6 of Mathematica December 14, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Mathematica is an excellent program, with good built-in and online documentation - although many feel the Documentation Centre in version 6 is not as good as the Help Browser in version 5.2. But sooner or later you will find a problem for which the official Mathematica documentation does not help. The program can then be very frustrating, as the syntax is complicated and error messages can be very cryptic. Help online is painfully slow, as the official resource, the news group comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica (Mathgroup), is moderated, so help requests have to be approved before they will appear. (The newsgroup sci.math.symbolic is sometimes helpful and since its not controlled by Wolfram Research, posts appear immediately). Hence Mathematica users will need one or more good books - more so than with other similar programs such as Maple or Matlab.
In addition to the book Mathematica Navigator by Ruskeepaa, I own several other books on Mathematica, including:
* The Mathematica Book, Fifth Edition by Stephen Wolfram
* The Mathematica Guidebook: Programming by Michael Trott.
* The Mathematica GuideBook for Symbolics (w/ DVD) by Michael Trott.
* Schaum's Outline of Mathematica by Eugene Don
* An Introduction to Programming with Mathematica, Third Edition by Paul Wellin
* Programming in Mathematica (3rd Edition) by Roman Maeder - I also own the first edition.
* The Beginners Guide to MathematicaRG, Version 4 by Jerry Glynn and Theordore Gray
plus a few more old books I've either had a very long time or bought very cheaply on Amazon.
Given the choice of only one book, I would choose Mathematica Navigator by Ruskeepaa. It comes with a CD-ROM which has the whole contents of the book, which may be integrated into Mathematica's help system. It's not unique in that respect, as so do Micheal Trott's Mathematica Guidebooks, but they have far too much irrelevant material in them. Ruskeepaa's book sticks to important facts about Mathematica. The book covers a wide range of topics. Sometimes I wish in more depth, but the book offers a good compromise between width and depth. In particular, the information on writing Mathematica programs is far too short, so its unlikely to satisfy someone wanting to write a major Mathematica package. For writing packages, Programming in Mathematica (3rd Edition) by Roman Maeder based on Mathematica 3 is arguably still the best, although Maeder's 1997 book is very old.
The only significant fault I can find of Ruskeepaa's book is its age. Mathematica 6 is a really major upgrade from 5 with many functions now built into the kernel which previously needed to be loaded from packages. Many functions or options have been deprecated. As such, some of the information is no longer accurate. But given at the time of writing (December 2007) there is no book on Mathematica 6 published, I think Ruskeepaa's book, which is based on version 5, is the best Mathematica users can get. However, if by the time you read this, someone has published a book on Mathematica 6, then it might be worth buying that instead.
I would have given this 5 stars, but it is getting a bit dated now.
Second Edition is even better than the first August 21, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I liked the first version so much that I bought this second edition also. The first edition was based on Mathematica 3 but this second edition is based on Mathematica 5 (Mathematica 6 has only just shipped within the past 2 months).
As did the first edition, this second edition comes with a cd that contains the entire book in Mathematica notebook form. The style sheets used to format the second edition cd notebooks are much cleaner looking than the first.
At anyrate, I definitely recommend the second edition even if you already have the first edition.
Constantly Referring To July 18, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I agree with many of the other reviewers - this book is great. I recently got Mathematica and found the imbedded Help browser a little cryptic at times. I purchased Mathematica Navigator after reading many of the reviews here. I haven't read the book from cover to cover, but instead use it as a reference after having read chapters 1 through 3.
I'm studying Matrix algebra, so I skipped to Chapter 18 and worked through the examples without any problem, save a small error on page 467 where an upper case P was typed in lower case.
Highly recommend for anyone wanting help making the most out of very powerful software.
Best Choice for starting May 29, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Very well written and full of useful information to start learning Mathematica. It covers all the foundamentals.
Excellent book to buy with An Introduction to Programming with Mathematica April 25, 2007
This is a GREAT reference book. You won't learn how to program Mathematica from it. You will learn an amazing amount about how Mathematica works by reading it. If you don't believe me, check out it's thorough explanation of cubic splines. It's better than the Mathematica Help. It also comes with the complete book which can be installed in the Mathematica help system.
There is, literally, a wealth of information to work with in this book.
I would also strongly recommend getting An Introduction to Programming with Mathematica, Third Edition. This is a first rate "course in a book" for programming.
There are other books which are good. Between these two books, you will have an amazing arsenal to work with!
Paul
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