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Joe Bolte is manager of the Wolfram Demonstrations Project.

For those who are not aware of MATHEMATICA, this interview should provide an adequate overview and challenge those interested to delve deeper into this most interesting program and system.

1) First of all, when and who started this thing called MATHEMATICA and for what purpose?

Mathematica was created by Stephen Wolfram, the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research back in 1988. It grew out of tools that Dr. Wolfram was developing for his own research in complex systems, and over the last 20 years has grown into the world's most powerful and efficient computational software system.

2) Who uses Mathematica and is this available on-line, on a CD or what?

The majority of Mathematica's millions of users are technical and other professionals. But Mathematica is also heavily used in education, and there are many hundreds of courses from junior high school to graduate school based on it. With the availability of discounted student versions and the free Mathematica Player, Mathematica is now a popular tool for students around the world. One of our enthusiastic users, Abby Brown, has been developing courseware with Mathematica for a while. She created classroom screencasts (http://www.wolfram.com/solutions/precollege/videos ) for our website.

Her students have made some marvelous Demonstrations for us as well.

Mathematica has become a standard in many organizations, and it is used today in all of the Fortune 50 companies, all of the 15 major departments of the U.S. government, and all of the world's 50 largest universities.

Mathematica can be purchased for download or on a CD, and Mathematica Player is a free download at http://www.wolfram.com/products/player/download.cgi.

3) Basically Mathematica 6 is more than just crunching numbers and data but rather, demonstrating how the numbers work and providing a pictoral image or visual picture of how the numbers work and interact. Am I correct in this?

Well, Mathematica is the best "cruncher of numbers and data" out there, but I think you are right in your assessment. Visualization has always been a unique strength of Mathematica, and we are taking it to the next level with the completely overhauled graphics and interactivity language in Version 6.

What really makes Mathematica powerful is that it exposes these cutting-edge algorithms written by our research team in an easy-to create, manipulable way.

Nothing reflects the distinction you made better than the difference between peoples' reactions when I describe what I do and when I show them. If I say that I work for a math software company and describe something that we are developing, even the most technically minded person's eyes begin to glaze.

But if we're lucky enough to be close to computer and I can show an example, they see the power of Mathematica in actually visualizing concepts. They get really excited, and they almost always have a good idea about something they want us to build.

4) What is The Wolfram Demonstrations Project?

The name refers to both the platform that we at Wolfram are building to support the new kind of interactive publishing that Mathematica 6 makes possible, and the group of people that create content for this system by publishing Demonstrations.

5) Wolfram and Mathematica 6 introduces a new paradigm for "instant interactivity". What exactly does this mean and why is it important?

Instant interactivity is how we describe the Mathematica 6 capability to create engaging user interfaces in a matter of minutes. It's so easy that high school teachers feel comfortable assigning the creation of Demonstrations to their students. I made a couple of my own Demonstrations today just to explore a problem that was on my mind. Even two years ago, I wouldn't have been able to do something that quickly, and I probably would never have pursued the solution to that problem. But with Mathematica 6, it was a 10-minute job.

This is the aspect of Mathematica that I believe is going to contribute to the success of the Wolfram Demonstrations. It takes other software products dozens or often hundreds of lines of code just create a decent interface, but Mathematica can do it with about one line per control.

6) In reviewing your home page, you have a tremendous amount of information, for a vast number of academic subjects. Who are the primary users of your materials?

The Demonstrations project is so new that we are often surprised by the different types of people who become interested in it. It's an amazing new technology, and the potential for education is obvious, so it's no surprise that technology buffs and educators of all levels are interested. We've also been contacted by artists, authors and researchers with interesting takes on the site.

7) You have 1,392 Demonstrations of various theorems, laws, and various examples of geometry, calculus, and physics. Is there a central web page that we can access and why have you diversified so much?

Well, as of this writing, we have 1499 of them and growing. All of the Demonstrations live at http://www.demonstrations.wolfram.com

We encourage new users to explore the site through the blue navigation bar at the near the top of every page, but if you want something specific, you can always find it by searching from any page.

8) I perused your site and found Rubik's cube, but not the Latin Squares Design...I understand that I could even enter this into your system. Am I correct?

Sure! Anyone with access to Mathematical 6 can contribute a new Demonstration, or an improvement to an old one. Since the public launch of the site, our collection has been expanded and improved by a community of enthusiasts who realize the power of the new publishing medium we are developing. These folks have contributed their own time to help make something interesting, educational and beautiful.

9) Could you give us a few of your web sites that we could visit and learn more?

We at Wolfram are passionate about mathematics, computation, and science.

One of our more interesting websites for your readers isMathWorld (http://mathworld.wolfram.com), the web's most extensive and popular mathematics resource. We have several educational sites including our Integrator site (http://integrals.wolfram.com), Mathematica for Students (http://www.wolfram.com/student), and of course our newest project, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project (http://demonstrations.wolfram.com).

10) What question have I neglected to ask?

I would be remiss if I didn't tell your readers that they can lean anything about Mathematica at http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica and experience it firsthand at http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/experience .

Published July 11, 2007