Conversation Among Friends

Mma 6 is a HUGE change from Mma 5.2  — it has been in the works for quite a few years now. It is mostly backward compatible; however, you will want to keep Mma 5.2 around just in case for some legacy notebooks.

The big change is, obviously, in the user interface. From our perspective, the really nice thing will be the dynamic graphics and associated controls that let us pop up monitors. The other really nice thing is that graphics are full Mma objects — no more bitmap blobs! You can actually select points and rotate 3D graphics the way you would want to.

Of course, the kernel guys have been busy and snuck in a few enhancements along the way. Check out the new demonstrations site,

http://Demonstrations.wolfram.com

to see some (~1,000) examples using the new features.

(Joey: sorry about the font size. I hit the buttons but nothing happens. These folk need to understand that Apple is on the rise!)

I've been feeling burnt out so I've been exploring some of the new features in Mma6. It is slick. If you head to their blog site, Theo Gray has a very nice post on "computable data functions",

If you drill in on, for example, the financial data paclets,

Now I just need to stay focused on getting DataModeler out the door and not learning any new things! However, if a fellow was inclined to apply advanced nonlinear data modeling techniques to something like stock portfolio selection, life just got a whole lot easier.