M101: A First Course in Mathematica

Course Objective This two-day training course provides hands-on experience with all the basic features of Mathematica 8 as well as a comprehensive foundation for more advanced work in solving applications and developing software solutions.

Presenter The course is presented by a Wolfram Education Group certified instructor.

Target Audience The course is designed primarily for people who are interested in becoming expert Mathematica users but who currently have little or no experience with the system. This course can also be helpful for experienced users who would like to broaden their basic understanding of Mathematica and for those interested in learning exactly what the system can do.

Delivery Type Courses are delivered as instructor-led classes in computer classroom facilities or as online classes over the web. Course topics are presented with alternating sessions of lectures and exercises. All classes feature low student-teacher ratios. This course is also available in French, German, and Japanese.

Syllabus This basic course is organized into seven segments.

Introduction
Step-by-step instruction on getting started, free-form input with Wolfram|Alpha, performing basic operations, building up computations, and navigating the user interface, as well as a description of how to use and take full advantage of the documentation system
Programming I
Introduction to the Mathematica programming language with emphasis on familiar programming tasks involving procedural, functional, and rule-based styles of programming
Visualization and Graphics
Two- and three-dimensional plotting, plotting data, using options, and creating dynamic and interactive graphics
Symbolic Computation
Computation with symbolic expressions, including polynomial operations, solving equations, functions from calculus, and simplification
Numerical Computation
Fitting data, interpolation, integration, solving equations, displaying intermediate values, differential equations, linear systems, exact vs. inexact numbers, arbitrary-precision numbers, and working with large arrays
Programming II
A deeper look at the syntax and structure of the Mathematica programming language, functional programming, pure functions, options and messages, and creating efficient programs
Working with Data
Importing and exporting data and files, file formats, file paths, working with data collections, working with spreadsheets, formatting tables, working with data from the internet, and visualization of large datasets

In addition, the course includes supplementary materials on slide show creation, stylesheets, hyperlinks and buttons, as well as a set of extended projects designed to give practice with the topics from this course.

Limited time is frequently available for discussion of special topics chosen by course attendees or at the discretion of the instructor.

Course Materials Each attendee will be provided with Mathematica course notebooks and access to the current version of Mathematica. The course notebooks require Mathematica or Wolfram CDF Player. For attendees participating in classroom-based sessions, course materials are distributed in print and on CD-ROM, and are yours to keep; a computer running Mathematica is available for your use during class. For attendees participating in online classes, a download of the course materials is provided; a temporary Mathematica training license is provided upon request.

Prerequisites Course attendees are expected to have experience with common features of modern computer software. Also helpful are knowledge of mathematics through elementary calculus and experience with computer programming at the level of an introductory course in any computer programming language. No prior Mathematica experience is required for this course.