In here you will find mostly - if not only - Mathematica enthusiasts, so the answer to your question will most certainly be "Hell yeah!!!". It was invaluable in college math and physics classes, in physics graduate school, and in my new career as a health economist.įirst of all, no man cries stinking fish (according to the first Google hit this is the translation of a saying that literally goes "do not ask the innkeeper if his wine is good").
Mathematica has gotten a lot cooler since then, and I've used it continually that whole time. I think I probably learned more math playing with Mathematica that year than I did in class, and it was pretty helpful when it came time to do my homework too, making it easy to double-check my work, plot functions, and sometimes cheat figure out the answer when I was stuck. The book is no longer available, sad to say, but it's been replaced with a ton of online documentation, and it looks like they're working on a new introductory book as well.
I learned even more about math, because it came with a huge book that described all the mathematical functions it contained, going way beyond the familiar cosines and logarithms to mysterious and exotic functions like the the Gamma Function and the Zeta Function. I learned quite a bit about programming from it, and found the lessons I'd learned were really helpful when it was time to learn other computer languages, like Lisp, Python, and even Fortran and C++. To say that Mathematica is the best gift I ever got wouldn't do it justice. I had written a few dippy little games in Pascal, and was just about to take Calculus. Like you, I was interested in programming and math, but had pretty limited knowledge of both. I got a copy of Mathematica as a birthday gift from my grandparents when I was only a couple years older than you are. Absolutely! The questions here often depend on advanced math because Mathematica can be a very useful tool for doing more advanced mathematics, but that's hardly the only thing it's good for.
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