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[WSG21] New Intro to Wolfram Language Daily Study Group

Rory Foulger

We're starting a new Daily Study Group for new users of Wolfram Language! If you'd like to learn to program in Wolfram Language with a combination of short lessons, poll questions to review key concepts, practice problems and Q&A, this is the group for you! We'll be working through the Elementary Introduction to Wolfram Language book by Stephen Wolfram with lots of interactive examples. A certificate of program completion will be awarded to participants who attend online sessions and pass quizzes. A list of daily topics can be found on the Daily Study Groups page. The study group sessions include videos and reading materials for the course and time for discussion and Q&A.

REGISTER HERE: https://www.bigmarker.com/series/daily-study-group-an-elementary-introduction-to-the-wolfram-language/series_details

About This Study Group: Learn the Wolfram Language and modern computational thinking from Stephen Wolfram's book with veteran Wolfram Language instructor and developer David Withoff and Wolfram instructional designer and technologist Rory Foulger. No prior programming knowledge is required.

Sessions include short lessons, poll questions to review key concepts, practice problems and Q&A. A certificate of program completion will be awarded to participants who attend online sessions and pass quizzes.

Study Group sessions run daily, Monday through Friday. This Study Group begins Monday, March 21, 2022.

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Marcos Henrique da Silva Bassani

Thank you James and congratulation for the successful completion of the Study Group !!! See you in next classes to come! Best wishes, Marcos

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Marcos Henrique da Silva Bassani

The "Exercises" worked just fine with me, no exception. But the problem occured when I took the quizzes. They were zeroed when questions were clearly right. There seems to be some issues with timing the deadline. It seemed to me that the due date would be the last time to take the quizzes but somehow they were accepted only until the day before. Anyway, just a misinterpretation of my part.

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JamesLeslie Brown

Hi

I was very pleased with my experience w the course, including the Quiz. An Email I recvd on 7Apr2022 said in part:

"Quiz Email 7Apr2022 The quizzes are ready at the links below. There are five quizzes that must be passed with scores of 60% or higher to earn your completion certificate. You have until April 15th to complete them. https://wolfr.am/WSG23_Quiz1 https://wolfr.am/WSG23_Quiz2 https://wolfr.am/WSG23_Quiz3 https://wolfr.am/WSG23_Quiz4 https://wolfr.am/WSG23_Quiz5"

I took the 5 Quiz during the week of 11-15Apr2022, which included the last Quiz on the last Day. I can confirm that the Quizes appeared to be accepted and Graded.

On one test, for two of the questions NONE of the answers were entirely correct, according to my evaluation and since these 2 Questions were of the type "Which of the following answers are correct", I left them blank...sometimes in the past with college-level multiple-choice tests I have had questions where no answer was correct, so this did not seem to be entirely out-of-line to answer that way. Although, normally, in college muliple choice test, one is asked to "Pick the Answer closest to being correct" Regardless, these were the only 2 question (for that test) graded wrong, so I still got 80%. And the tests all seemed to allow retaking to get a better grade (each attempt would result in saying the test result was recorded, but to retake the quiz if I wished, which I did do, even tho I always got a passing score the 1st time, and for each subsequent try). If I re-took the test, it was simply to find out the correct answer on the 1 or 2 I missed...I'm assuming the 60% score reqt for the certificate applied for the 1st try? When I re-took the test where I left 2 blank, the answer closest to the correct answer seemed to be determined as being correct, but I did confirm that the question evaluated by MY copy of Mathematica did indeed give a slightly different answer, as I had deduced on the 1st Try. I know, life is messy?

Which brings up the question. When do you send out the Certificates? Presumably by mail, or is it by email? I await eagerly.

I realize that may take a few weeks, but in the era of instant gratification...I am left devoid of the anticipated gratification of having successfully completed the course and quizzes.

Thank You Again James L Brown

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Joseph Sauvageau

Yes I have also encountered that at times, especially if you copy & paste something into the cell instead of entering a solution entirely by hand. I'm not sure, but there may be other characters that get entered into the cell that are perhaps control characters that are not visible? Sometimes, I just ignored it knowing that I had the correct solution, sometimes, I cleared the cell and manually entered the content and that seemed to fix the problem.

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Erik Swan

Is anyone else having issues with the "Check My Solution" functionality in the exercise notebooks? Specifically, for Section 10 (images), "Check My Solution" is always telling me it is incorrect even though I have confirmed my solution is correct according to the exercise answers given at the end of the book. It's also spitting out an error.

Here's a screenshot:

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Ricardo Gorrin

Hi Eric, my name is Ricardo, and I am working though the exercises on chapter 10. I am experiencing the same problems in the first two exercises as you. Did you find a solution? Thank you! Ricardo

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Cassidy Hinkle

Hello Ricardo and Erik,

Thank you for your feedback, we looked into the exercises noted and found that they were older version of the notebooks. You fix this by going to https://www.wolframcloud.com/browse#Home/Copied%20Files and deleting the exercise notebook, then refreshing the page. Please email us at wolfram-u@wolfram.com if you experience further issues.

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Ricardo Gorrin

Good morning Cassidy,

Thank you for looking to my post regarding the exercises of chapter 10. Exercises 10.7 to 10.11 (the ones that don't need a picture) are working fine, but the rest of them (the ones with Steve's picture) don't show any answer when I press the "Check my solution" box. I did what you suggested on your post.

Kind regards,

Ricardo

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Marcos Henrique da Silva Bassani

Please, correcting: "Dear Instructors: I have understood that QUIZZES WERE due today April 14th, 2022." in fact, today is due day: April 15th 2022. Best wishes, Marcos

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Marcos Henrique da Silva Bassani

TE MESSAGE below is displayed. The date displayed in the Wolfram quizz site is 04.12.2032 4:57PM ????? Well, very disapointing, Marcos

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Gerald Dorfman

The fruit roll problem:

The theoretical probabilities, P, of Winner, Loser, and Try again are:

P(W)=5/5^3=1/25=4%, P(L)=(5 * 4 * 3)/5^3=12/25=48%, and P(T)=1-(P(W)+P(L))=1-52%=48%.

Attached file FruitRoll_GDorfman_9apr22.nb contains two items:

(1) An alternative module for the problem that avoids using Which, Switch, etc., together with code to output 30 executions of it

(2) A simple Monte Carlo analysis that supports the theoretically computed probabilities.

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José Dordá

A solution for the Fruit Roller using the functions Tally and Switch.

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JamesLeslie Brown

When I downloaded the Course Materials at the End of the Last Day of the Course, there does not seem to be any of the Week 3 notebooks. Week 1 and Week 2 notebooks are there, but not Week 3. There seems to be no new files added since Apr 1 (hmmm, All Fools Day?).

Were any new files added more recent than Apr 1, and somehow I'm downloading the wrong cache of files?

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JamesLeslie Brown

Hi I'm in process of my review for the 5 Quiz Marathon. I think it is reasonable to ask whether each Quiz covers a certain portion of the Course? Said Info would make my prep more efficient, since we covered and entire Book in 2 weeks...

I would expect the 1st Quiz would cover perhaps the first few Days, while perhaps Quiz 5 might be expected to cover the entire course? or is there some other portioning that you would be willing to share?

I would happily accept the answer in the form of a Wolfram Language Association Assignment that would lead to a set {<| "Quiz 1" -> {1, 3}, "Quiz 2" -> {3,5}, ... or some such association of Quiz # -> {Day1, Day2}

Thanks In Advance

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Charles Glover

New Intro to Wolfram Language Daily Study Group (begins March 21!)

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Charles Glover

I do not see your email. I have checked gmail, inbox, spam, junk & deleted items. Please resend it.

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SRI JANAKRISHNAN G

Could you please share your email. I will reply through email

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SRI JANAKRISHNAN G

I Made you a reply gmail yesterday regarding the issues with quiz with some pictures

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SRI JANAKRISHNAN G

I have send you an reply email Regarding the Issues with quiz

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Joseph Sauvageau

There appears to be a bug in Quiz 2: Problem 8 My email is: jsauvage@jpl.nasa.gov

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JamesLeslie Brown

I found at least one answer for 2 of the Questions on Quiz 2 was "close" to being correct, but actually all of the offered answers for these 2 Questions still contained some errors where they would not evaluate properly. I'm guessing that each person receives a set of different Questions on their Quiz 2 that they are confronted with; the Questions being extracted at random from a Pool of Test Questions (a New Wolfram Language Function: RandomQuestion[10]??).

Anyway, I'm not particularly bothered, as I passed it anyway, but would like to describe the particulars so as to contribute to an improvement in the Pool of Questions. For obvious reasons, I realize it might be best not to discuss this openly in this forum.

Is there an email that I can send the 2 Questions, and what I believe is incorrect as to the offered answers?

Also, it is suggested -in the Quiz- that to get the Certificate, you must get 60% score...I'm thinking that what is meant is the the score should be 60% or greater, otherwise I would have had to go back and change 4 of my answers to reduce my score back to 60%?

Overall, it's been Fun so Far. And I do appreciate the effort that the Gang at Wolfram has made in offering this course.

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Gerald Dorfman

Is there a better way to turn a list of associations into a single association than is illustrated in the following example? ((In Mathematica, the Entity[...] entries are the usual icons, which are more readable.)

assocList = {<|Entity["City", {"Kabul", "Kabul", "Afghanistan"}] -> "Kabul, Afghanistan"|>, <|Entity[ "City", {"Maarianhamina", "Aoland", "Finland"}] -> "Maarianhamina, Aland Islands"|>, <|Entity[ "City", {"Tirana", "Tirana", "Albania"}] -> "Tirana, Albania"|>}; Association@Flatten@Normal[assocList]

Here is the output:

<|Entity["City", {"Kabul", "Kabul", "Afghanistan"}] -> "Kabul, Afghanistan", Entity["City", {"Maarianhamina", "Aoland", "Finland"}] -> "Maarianhamina, Aland Islands", Entity["City", {"Tirana", "Tirana", "Albania"}] -> "Tirana, Albania"| >

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Rory Foulger

Hi!

Merge[assocList, Total]

Should do the same thing :)

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Rohit Namjoshi

Hi Gerald,

This is probably the easiest way if there are no duplicate keys

Association@assocList

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Gerald Dorfman

Why does an association with 2 rules behave differently than an association with one rule in this example:
In[98]:= {Reverse[<|a -> {2, 3}, b -> {4, 5}|>, {2}], Reverse[<|a -> {2, 3}|>, {2}]}

Out[98]= {<|a -> {3, 2}, b -> {5, 4}|>, <|a -> {2, 3}|>}

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Charles Glover

Is anyone else having a problem going to the link for Quiz 1?. See attachment for the returned error. I get this error using both Chrome and Safari browsers. I get the same error when I try to open "An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language".

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Pawel Petrykowski

Is it one of the 17 solutions for the fruits roller?

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Rory Foulger

very cool! I haven't seen this one before, nice job

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Donald Durack

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Rory Foulger

nice!

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José Dordá

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Rory Foulger

nice! I love that you combined our learning on manipulate with this project!

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Sarah Hoyle-Katz

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Rory Foulger

very cool!

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Hector Naranjo

My contribution is from a fav Jazz Art from the National Museum of American History, LeRoy Neiman's Big Band

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Rory Foulger

this is awesome, I love the triangles!

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Hector Naranjo

Me too, although now i see the missed opportunity for the nice joke "I love squares"

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Rory Foulger

haha true!

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José Dordá

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Rory Foulger

beautiful!

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Rory Foulger

Half way through week 1! How are we enjoying the class so far? What have you learned? What's been hard or surprising for you?

Here are some of the things we've created together in the last couple of days:

Share your own creations!

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Cassidy Hinkle

Thank you to all who have been participating in the study group so far. As noted by Rory in today's session, Lesson 10 of the course is your homework for the evening:

https://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-u/an-elementary-introduction-to-the-wolfram-language/10-images.en.html

You will need to be logged in with your Wolfram ID to directly enter the course, otherwise you directed to sign in to continue.

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Christopher Long

I missed the start of this one, but I'd be interested in joining the next iteration.

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