A Review of Mathematica 6

years ago. The new version includes improved graphics handling, dynamic interactivity, expanded symbolic capabilities, and thousands of other new features and options. This review assumes some knowledge of Mathematica syntax and is not meant to provide an intro-duction to Mathematica. Those looking for an introduction should read the tutorial entitled “First Five Minutes with Mathematica ” located in Mathematica’s Documentation Center (under Help in the menu bar). Further introductory materials can be found on Wolfram Research’s website and in [1, 2, 3]. As Mathematica is an enormous software package with extensive capabilities, it is impossible to include a complete review of the new version here. Therefore, this review will focus on a handful of the major improvements and additions included in version 6. Graphics The family of plotting commands has been dramatically improved. Most notably, Mathematica 6 allows for the immediate real-time rotation of three-dimensional surfaces and plots. This adds an ability that the Maple and MATLAB software packages have had for years. For two-dimensional plots in version 6, the default curve color is blue while the axes are black. (In previous versions, all curves and axes were colored black by default.) If multiple functions are plotte