Wolfram Mathematica

About this release

Mathematica is unusual among technical software in that symbolic and numeric work live in the same language. An integral can be solved exactly, then evaluated numerically, then plotted, then turned into an interactive control, without changing tools or converting anything. For research, teaching and engineering analysis that continuity is the whole argument.

The notebook is the document. Text, code, results, plots and interactive controls sit in one file that is simultaneously the calculation and the write up, which means a piece of analysis is reproducible by opening it and re evaluating rather than by reconstructing what someone did. Notebooks export to typeset documents and to presentation form without leaving the program.

Coverage is genuinely enormous. Algebra, calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, optimisation, statistics, probability, number theory, graph theory, image processing, signal processing, machine learning, geometry and units and quantities all have first class function sets that share one consistent syntax and interoperate freely.

Alongside the mathematics sits a curated data layer covering chemical, astronomical, geographic, linguistic, financial and physical reference information, callable as ordinary functions so a computation can pull real quantities directly instead of having them typed in. Visualisation covers everything from a quick plot to publication figures and interactive manipulable graphics built with a single wrapper.

What it does

Symbolic and numeric together

Exact results and numerical evaluation in one language with no conversion step.

Notebook documents

Code, prose, results and interactive controls in a single reproducible file.

Very wide function coverage

Calculus through machine learning and image processing under one consistent syntax.

Built in curated data

Chemical, geographic, astronomical and physical reference data callable as functions.

Interactive graphics

Manipulable visualisations built by wrapping an ordinary expression.

Publication output

Notebooks export as typeset documents or as presentations without another tool.

Changed in this version

• Faster evaluation on large symbolic expressions.
• Expanded machine learning function set.
• New visualisation types added for statistical work.
• Curated data collections refreshed and extended.
• Notebook interface performance improved on very long documents.

System requirements

Install order

1. Unpack the archive to a drive with plenty of free space.
2. Run the installer and choose which documentation and data components to include.
3. Let the first launch build the function index before running anything heavy.
4. Set the default notebook directory and evaluation kernel options in preferences.

Worth knowing before you start

File details