# All Questions

142k views

### xkcd-style graphs

I received an email to which I wanted to respond with a xkcd-style graph, but I couldn't manage it. Everything I drew looked perfect, and I don't have enough command over Plot Legends to have these ...
21k views

### Where can I find examples of good Mathematica programming practice?

I consider myself a pretty good Mathematica programmer, but I'm always looking out for ways to either improve my way of doing things in Mathematica, or to see if there's something nifty that I haven't ...
35k views

### Help find a bright object on Mars!

In today's news, scientists found a bright object on one of Curiosity's photos (it's near the bottom of the picture below). It's a bit tricky to find - I actually spent quite some time staring at the ...
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### Implementing efficient multiple undo

The Mathematica Front End's built-in Undo command can only undo a single editing step. Has anyone implemented or seen implemented an efficient and comfortable multiple undo? I have in mind ideas ...
12k views

### Mathematica Minecraft

Some time ago I asked myself: with all these great graphics and interactive capabilities of Mathematica, what kinds of 3D games can be implemented in it? And the answer which came to mind is ...
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### Are you interested in purchasing David Wagner's “Power programming with Mathematica”?

I recently contacted McGraw-Hill to see if they have a mechanism in place for printing out-of-print books that are still of interest. Specifically, I asked about "Power programming with Mathematica" ...
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### How to create word clouds?

Word clouds are rather useless fancy and visually appealing plots, where words are plotted with different sizes according to their frequency in a corpus. Many applications exist out there (Wordle, ...
2k views

### File-backed lists/variables for handling large data

Background Currently I am working with some large data (most of it generated by Mathematica itself). I usually find it a hassle to do this. For example, I just exported a large amount of data to ...
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### What are the most common pitfalls awaiting new users?

As you may already know, Mathematica is a wonderful piece of software. However, it has a few characteristics that tend to confuse new (and sometimes not-so-new) users. That can be clearly seen from ...
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### What are the use cases for different scoping constructs?

Mathematica includes three functions that I know of which can be used to effectively (if not actually) define a variable and give it a value within a local scope: ...
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### How can one find undocumented options or option values in Mathematica?

Mathematica has a lot of undocumented or poorly documented options. How does one go about working out if there is an undocumented option that might solve a particular problem? How does one work out ...
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### Resources for beautiful Mathematica Stylesheets

When the Wolfram Demonstrations were introduced and the Documentation-Center was redesigned, I remember it was the first time I thought someone had put some effort into creating a beautiful ...
6k views

### 1 Plot, 2 Scale/Axis

I would like to plot those two datasets on top of each other. But they have very different range on the $y$ axis. How can I have two different axis? I found the following on the help menu but quite ...
3k views

### How to compile effectively?

What are the best practices of compiling functions? I understand that this is a vague question, but let me list some aspects that might trigger useful answers. Some of these have already been answered ...
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### How to peel the labels from marmalade jars using Mathematica?

How can I detect and peel the label from the jar below (POV, cylinder radius, jar contents are all unknown) to get something like this, which is the original label before it was stuck on the jar? ...
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### What is the distinction between DownValues, UpValues, SubValues, and OwnValues?

When reading through the documentation, you often encounter the phrases DownValues, UpValues, ...
2k views

### Artistic image vectorization

The question is how can we use Mathematica to create vectorized versions of low-resolution images? The goal is to get an image suitable for quality printing at any resolution. Since "true" ...
4k views

### Alternatives to procedural loops and iterating over lists in Mathematica

While there are some cases where a For loop might be reasonable, it's a general mantra – one I subscribe to myself – that "if you are using a ...
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### Struct equivalent in Mathematica?

I really miss having something like a struct in Mathematica. I know of (and regularly use) a couple of programming techniques which feel like a ...
3k views

### List of compilable functions

Is there somewhere a list on the functions that Compile can compile, or the cases in which a particular function can be compiled that I haven't found? I'd be glad ...
1k views

### Functional style using lazy lists?

Let's say I want to answer the question "what are the first 400 palindromic prime numbers?" The first approach that comes to my mind from the set of languages that I know is to use some sort of lazy ...
11k views

### How to make an inkblot?

How to effectively create a polygon that looks like a realistic inkblot? So far, I could come up with this (borrowing from Ed Pegg Jr.'s Rorschach demonstration): ...
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### How to manipulate 2D plots?

When it comes to visual analysis, large datasets or data with intricate internal details often makes plotting in 2D useless, as the outcome is either just a fraction of the full dataset, or no details ...
1k views

### Programmatic formatting for Mathematica code - possible?

It seems to be both an interesting programming challenge and a very useful practical application to have a Mathematica program which would allow one to pretty-print Mathematica code, so that it is ...
2k views

### Functions with Options

Suppose you want to create a function which has optional arguments. Maeder's book "Programming in Mathematica" covers the topic extensively up to version 3, but some things have changed/evolved since ...
1k views

### What are some useful, undocumented Mathematica functions?

There have already been some questions about some undocumented functionality in Mathematica. Such as (please add to these lists!) How can one find undocumented options or option values in ...
41k views

### Cutting bagels into linked halves

I recently came across this video: Mathematically correct breakfast, which shows how a bagel can be neatly sliced into two identical linked halves. I'd like to try this with Mathematica. Here's a ...
4k views

### Exporting graphics to PDF - huge file

I want to draw some basic surfaces, export them to PDF and include them in a LaTeX file. I create a simple 3D graphics object, for instance with ...
740 views

### What best practices or performance considerations are there for choosing between Cases, Position, Pick and Select?

Cases, Select,Pick and Position each have different ...
4k views

### $\LaTeX$ and Mathematica

I quite often would like to draw graphics in my $\LaTeX$ documents using Mathematica. I have encountered three problems. I would like to know if there are any workarounds to these problems I would ...
638 views

### Automatically generating a dependency graph of an arbitrary Mathematica function?

Has anyone written a function to pull the function dependencies of a function? That is, it would be nice to have a function that returns a list of function dependencies as a set of rules, terminating ...
3k views

### Torn edge paper effect for images

In my answers to Plotting Error Bars on a Log Scale I used a so called "torn edge" effect from on one of the images. @SjoerdC.deVries commented: "BTW I liked the ripped-out look of your InputForm ...
5k views

### How to create hedcut style images?

Yesterday the hedcut style was brought up in chat. How can we create a hedcut-like style automatically in Mathematica, using a photograph as a starting point? I am looking to create a similar ...
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### Shaving the last 50 ms off NMinimize

The background: I have to fit an objective function for ~10 000 datasets in near real time (with near real time being on the order of about 10 seconds). I compile the huge objective function, so that ...
2k views

### ListPlot: Plotting large data fast

Mathematica produces fantastic-looking graphics, but it can be slow on large data sets. Here is an example for a (random) time series: ...
4k views

### How can this confetti code be improved to include shadows and gravity?

Here's some confetti: ...
2k views

### Recovering data points from an image

Unfortunately, some data can only be obtained in picture form (Japanese publications anyone?). Since this cannot be worked with, it has to be converted to a dataset that can; I was wondering whether ...
775 views

### Is it possible to improve Mathematica's auto-completion feature?

In this answer Brett Champion describes how one can intercept and modify the suggestions used for auto-completion. Question: Is it possible to modify the suggestion for the automatic auto-completion ...
1k views

### Minimal effort method for integrating C++ functions into Mathematica

As of Mathematica 8, what is the minimal effort way to integrate an existing C++ function into Mathematica? I think we have these: MathLink (it was quite long ago I used it last time) communication ...
930 views

### Syntax highlighting for your own functions

Mathematica has a useful feature that for functions and special constructs getting passed local variables (for example Minimize or ...
775 views

### Flatten command: matrix as second argument

One thing I could never wrap my head around is how Flatten works when provided with a matrix as the second argument, and the Mathematica help isn't particularly ...
4k views

### How can I calculate a jigsaw puzzle cut path?

I want to generate a path to cut an arbitrary shape into a set of jigsaw puzzle pieces. All pieces must be unique to preclude placing a piece in the wrong spot. Pieces must be interlocking such that ...
1k views

### Implementing a first person view of 3D objects in a scene

I've created the following scene with a Chinese-style building surrounded by trees, and a horse and a rabbit grazing on the grass in Mathematica (don't ask me why there's a bust of Beethoven in ...
2k views

### Is there an open source implementation of Mathematica-the-language?

I've seen questions before such as "What is the best open-source equivalent for Mathematica?", but that specific question (and that line of inquiry in general) cares more about the computer algebra ...
2k views

### How can I generate this “domain coloring” plot?

I found this plot on Wikipedia: Domain coloring of $\sin(z)$ over $(-\pi,\pi)$ on $x$ and $y$ axes. Brightness indicates absolute magnitude, saturation represents imaginary and real magnitude. ...
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### Understanding CDF

Update Since more and more issues are revealed as I venture deeper into the world of CDF, I decided to make this thread more general and hopefully more useful. I know posted my findings as an answer, ...
893 views

### How to generally match, unify and merge patterns?

This question was split from this one. While that question is now about how to match two particular patterns (mostly using Verbatim or ...
2k views

### Programmatic approach to HDR photography with Mathematica image processing functions

The High dynamic range imaging (HDR or HDRI) direction in photography and image processing became very popular recently. Besides obvious photo art applications (see examples), there are many great ...