Today Wolfram Research is celebrating the 15th anniversary of Mathematica — software for doing calculations in science, engineering, and mathematics — with the release of Mathematica 5. The company says the update, described as the “advanced algorithms release,” has “thousands of new features and improvements.”
Mathematica 5 boasts over 100 new algorithms for symbolic and numerical computation, many of which are exclusive to the application. In some cases, Mathematica 5 is 1000 times faster than previous versions, according to Tom Wickham-Jones, director of Strategic Kernel Development for Wolfram Research. There are also updated versions of J/Link and MathLink, Mathematica’s standard connections to Java and C/C++.
Mathematica 5 is available for the Mac OS X and Mac OS 8.6-9.x, as well as other operating systems. The suggested retail price is US$1,880 and includes one year of Premier Service, as well as The Mathematica Book, Fifth Edition, by Stephen Wolfram. Academic and volume discounts are available.