Creating a Document Using Mathematica Notebook

It is fairly easy to use Mathematica Notebook by using the help screen and you are encouraged to experiment with this. However, the following instructions can be used to create a simple document using Mathematica Notebook:

1.

For convenience you should create your own palette made up of frequently used characters or expressions to be used in your document. Instructions, go to Creating Your Own Palette.

2.

You must begin with a new notebook. If a new notebook is not open, one can be opened by choosing File from the main menu of Mathematica Notebook and selecting New.

3.

Choose a specific page format for your document. On the main menu of Mathematica Notebook under Format, the option Style Sheet will allow you to choose which specific page format you would like to use, or you can simply use the default option.

Note: Mathematica Notebooks are structured interactive documents that are organized into a sequence of cells. Each cell can contain different types of material such as text, graphics, or Mathematica expressions. When creating a document, you must indicate what type of material is in each cell or the system will read it all as Mathematica expressions. This is quite simple to do using the main menu on the Notebook.

4.

To indicate what type of material is in a cell in your notebook document, before typing characters into the cells, choose Format on the main menu of Mathematica and select the Style option. Several choices appear. Simply choose which style you want to use for each cell of your document. Additionally, to change the material in a cell from one type to another, click on the cell bracket on the far right hand side of the cell, then choose Format on the main menu of Mathematica Notebook, select the Style option and choose which style to use.

Some typical cells defined in notebooks include:

• ``Title'' indicates the title of the notebook
• ``Section'' indicates a section heading
• ``Subsection'' indicates a subsection heading
• ``Text'' indicates ordinary text
• ``Input'' indicates Mathematica input
• ``Output'' indicates Mathematica output.

5.

Save and print the document as you would any Mathematica Notebook.