WSA Newsletter Vol. Iss. 1

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Contents: Page 1: Stephen Wolfram Live Code Event Recap

Page 2: Student Spotlight – Justin Pearson

Page 3: Student Exhibit – Adventures with the

Raspberry Pi

Page 4: Happenings

Page 5: Wolfram Online Trainings and Workshops

Wolfram Student Ambassador Newsletter Vol. 1 Issue 1

On Tuesday, June 23 Stephen Wolfram surprised fans and coders alike, recently showcasing the Wolfram Language on LiveCoding.tv. He demonstrated the various capabilities and functions through live coding with the language in front of a live audience. It quickly became one of the most popular events on the site with over 57, 000 views. Here are some reviews from coders at Hacker News: -“Watching the creator of a programming language program in it is a revealing experience. Stephen Wolfram is genius level smart”. -peterayemi -“This was a lot of fun. He mentioned he would be streaming again soon and even solicited problems to work on. So if you have something really hard to solve now’s your chance”. -callil

Welcome!

S

We would like to welcome and congratulate everyone for being a part of the inaugural Wolfram Student Ambassador program. You are all incredible and unique individuals who are more than capable of doing great things, and we can’t wait to see everyone’s success on their campus. This will be the first of a couple newsletters that will be sent to you throughout the semester to keep you informed in the latest events, important updates, trainings, workshops and other relevant happenings. It’ll also be a nice way to introduce you to your fellow ambassadors latest work, blogs, or various creations, as there will be sections of this newsletter highlighting their material. If you want to share your work, go ahead and let us know! Read through the newsletter, and let us know what you think. Enjoy!

https://www.livecoding.tv/video/live-with-stephen-wolfram/

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Student Spotlight Justin Pearson

School: UCSB Year: Graduate Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering

Mac or PC? No Linux? Anything with a decent terminal and package manager…. currently that's Mac with homebrew. I use my old Windows desktop for video editing since Adobe is stingy about cross-grading. But in general, OS wars aren't my thing - a computer is a tool: different tools for different applications. Are hammers better than screwdrivers? What first led you to get interested in Electrical and Computer Engineering? Well, I'm a controls engineer -- modeling real-world systems with math and then writing algorithms to control them. The same math can control a thermostat, a chemical process factory, an airplane autopilot, and an artificial pancreas. In control theory, steering a rocket is about as hard as balancing a broomstick -- it's essentially the same physics (a long rod balancing with force applied under it). That flexibility is very powerful and cool. What are some of your career goals? Alvin Toffler observed that as technology advances, it becomes more personalized. For example, the first automobiles were offered only in black. As assembly line processes improved, it became feasible to mass-manufacture cars of many colors. This customization gives us a lot of freedom in how we live our lives. However, we haven't seen this personalization in the education sector. I would like to change that. I like what Khan Academy, Coursera, etc are doing, but I would like even more personalization in my education: I want my teacher to know who I am, what I know, how I like to learn, what subjects I'm rusty on, and what I need to learn in order to achieve my personal career goals. I want it to sift through a giant corpus of educational material and find exactly what I -- Justin Pearson -- need at this point in my education. I believe that technology will make this possible within our lifetimes. Which would you rather be: student or teacher? Both. I want to learn and I want to share my knowledge with other folks. I don't think you can feel balanced with only one or the other, any more than you can communicate meaningfully being solely a speaker or solely a listener.

Each newsletter we will be spotlighting an ambassador who has been exceptional and will be asking them a few interesting questions

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So awhile ago, I purchased a Raspberry Pi (RPi) model B+. For those of y’all not familiar with what the RPi is, it’s essentially a microcomputer that acts as an educational tool designed to teach basic software and hardware to those of us who are a little bit new to tech. You can use it a multitude of ways, the way in which I use it is for running small computational mathematics projects that I don’t want to run on my laptop. A lot of people also use it as a mini desktop. If you’re after more info about the capabilities of the RPi, check out the hyperlink up at the top of this post! I’ll mostly be talking about my experiences using it for independent projects. Anyway, so to get started with the RPi, you need a few things. Specifically with the B+ model, it’s good to have these things:

• HDMI cable or VGA/HDMI converter • Ethernet chord • Mouse • Micro charger • Monitor

You will also need a micro SD card, so you can download the OS to it (you can also buy the pre packaged OS micro SD card, but a lot of people have had problems with the OS not being packaged properly).

For me, it took a little while to get up and running. This was because I didn’t know beforehand that, when downloading the OS, you need to remove all the individual files from the downloaded folder before copying them to the empty micro SD card. I also ran into the issue of trying to use my old monitor, with which I was going the VGA/HDMI route; as it turns out, the default frequency setting for the RPi is pretty high, in fact it’s too high for the settings of my old monitor. It’s possible to overclock the RPi in the config.txt file (and in fact, here’s a good description as to what’s what when doing just that) but that totally defeats the purpose of trying to run

Student Exhibit:

Jesse Dohmann Senior studying Physics and Mathematics at UT Austin

(continued)

Each newsletter we will be showcasing an ambassador’s work, whether it is an entry from their blog, project, or publication. Enjoy!

Adventures with the Raspberry Pi

Excerpt from “Probability, Possibility: Musings of a (Pseudo) Mathematician.” https://stochasticz.wordpress.com/

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when overclocking and the VGA/HDMI converter already takes up a significant amount of power.

I still think going the VGA/HDMI route is a good alternative, and I would like to be able to do that once I figure out how to get around it. Until then, I started using my TV monitor for this purpose, since it only requires an HDMI chord. Here’s what the set up looked like:

-See Image 1

Please excuse the clutter, I am a simple college student trying to make due with a small space! As you can probably see, I was evaluating and simplifying some equations using the Wolfram language (TWL) directly in the terminal; on all RPis, full capabilities of Mathematica and Wolfram language are bundled with the OS. This is extremely cool, because Wolfram language is an incredibly powerful functional language that is based around symbolic computation. It’s used for a variety of purposes, and is thus pretty versatile! It seems Wolfram Research is really trying to get their technology out there for more people to get their hands on! TWL itself doesn’t allow you to access graphics, so I needed the interface of Mathematica to run projects and view graphs/images. I’m mostly going to have to limit myself to very small projects (I am still testing the computational time of Mathematica on the RPi) because it seems that Mathematica runs pretty slow. I know that on the RPi2, Mathematica runs ~10x faster. -See Image 2 -See Image 3 The first picture is a basic Monte Carlo random number generator with 10000 points. The second picture is just me opening up the Mathematica interface! As you can see, I accessed Mathematica via the desktop; when you boot up the RPi, it defaults to a large terminal window. However, you can access the desktop with the command startx.

-See Image 4 Here’s what the desktop looks like! One of the other issues I ran into, when trying to write in TWL, is the configuration of the keyboard. The default is a standard British keyboard I’m pretty sure, because the “#” symbol was replaced with the “₤” symbol. This is easily fixed by accessing raspi-config and following the instructions for changing the keyboard there. As I continue to explore the capabilities of the RPi for computational mathematics projects, I’ll be sure to keep y’all updated as to what I learn/observe! Thanks for sticking around! -Jesse Dohmann ~ via Probability, Possibility Musings: of a (Pseudo) Mathematician

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Happenings Have you updated your LinkedIn profile yet? *Add Wolfram Language and Mathematica as a skill. Future employers are looking for this skill set! Also, add Wolfram Student Ambassador to your experiences. A few ideas: -Bullet Style:

• Representative for Wolfram Research at [campus] • Teach and inspire innovative uses of Wolfram Technology • Host talks and workshops that promote use across multiple fields of study • Collaborate on coding projects, events and newsletters • Build excitement through a social media presence • Student ambassadors act as leaders and liaisons between Wolfram and

their universities -Paragraph style:

• As an ambassador, I’m a representative for Wolfram Research, Inc. at [campus]. I host talks and workshops that promote the use of Wolfram technologies across multiple fields of study, as well as teach and inspire innovative uses.

Mathematica Student Certification! Mathematica certification is available to students worldwide. To achieve student certification, candidates must successfully complete a certification exam. The multiple-choice exam questions require Mathematica proficiency for solving a variety of computing and visualization tasks. An understanding of basic college level mathematics is recommended.

Here is a great opportunity if you are looking to for something unique to add to your resume or LinkedIn https://www.wolfram.com/training/certification/students/

Wolfram Hackathon Intern Openings We are looking for 2-3 students to travel to Hackathons throughout their area and be mentors for hackers participating in the event. It is a paid position. If you are interested or would like further details go to careers.wolfram.com and select “Hackathon Evangelist”.

Student Ambassador Roundtable We are planning the first online student ambassador roundtable, which will include presentations by our top developers, a workshop demonstration, and time for a group discussion afterwards. At the moment we are aiming for early August, so we want you to have that in mind as it gets closer, think of what your availability may look like around that time. An email with further information will be sent out soon.

Wolfram Language Tutorials (Rebroadcast) July 16, 2015

1-2:30PM EDT 5-6:30PM GMT

This event ran earlier in the year with such great response that we’ve invited our instructors back to do it again! Develop a project step-by-step using the Wolfram Language to plot and visualize data, code functions, and generate reports during this free online event. Wolfram instructors will share selected topics from our catalog and illustrate key principles of knowledge-based programming, with time to respond to your questions.

https://www.wolfram.com/training/special-event/wolfram-language-tutorials-2015/

Wolfram Online Trainings and Workshops

Take a look at the current trainings available. If you would like to attend one or all, let us know so we can get you access.

August 18/October 8, 1pm-5pm EDT -

The Wolfram Language: Programming Fundamentals

This course focuses on the structure of expressions and evaluation in the Wolfram Language, illustrating the many ways they can be used to design and implement more powerful programs. http://www.wolfram.com/training/courses/gen201.html

August 19, 1pm-4pm EDT –

Wolfram SystemModeler: An Introduction

-Introduces the basic features needed to become an adept user of Wolfram SystemModeler, including drag-and-drop modeling, creating components, simulating models, and visualizing simulation results. The course also covers integrating Wolfram SystemModeler and Mathematica, using Wolfram SystemModeler Link. Small class sizes allow for interaction with the instructor. http://www.wolfram.com/training/courses/wsm101.html

August 20, 1pm-4:30pm EDT –

The Wolfram Language: Applied Statistical Analysis

This course provides experience with the statistical tools that are available in the Wolfram Language. Using real-world and simulated datasets, participants will import and analyze data, work with statistical distributions, and visualize results. Course topics are presented in sessions of lectures with small class size. http://www.wolfram.com/training/courses/gen203.html

October 1, 1pm-5pm EDT -

CDF: Authoring Interactive Content

This course introduces the Computable Document Format—highlighting its easy-to-author interactivity and convenient deployment options—and explores the creation of a complex infographic with CDF. The course is ideal for authors of books, courseware, academic papers, and professional reports who want to infuse life into their work with interactive content. http://www.wolfram.com/training/courses/cdf101.html

Danielle Rommel Events Manager

[email protected] (217) 398-0700

Ext. 3187

Christian Rodriguez Program Coordinator

[email protected] (217) 398-0700 Ext.

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