Ok...Stephen Wolfram drives me bonkers at times. But Wolfram Research's decision to partner with the Pi Foundation and allow future releases of Rasperian OS to include both
Mathmatica (and the
previously mentioned here Wolfram Language) by default is a very generous and unexpected surprise.
And most surprising of all - it's completely
free.
Here's the
announcement:
The Wolfram Language and Mathematica on Raspberry Pi, for free
One of the best things about working on Raspberry Pi has been the opportunity to meet groups of people who are trying to bring about the same sort of change in the teaching of other subjects that we’re aiming for in computing. One great example is the computer-based math(s) (CBM) movement, which aims to redefine the teaching of mathematics in schools away from mechanical calculation and towards problem solving. From their website:
The importance of math to jobs, society, and thinking has exploded over the last few decades. Meanwhile, math education is in worldwide crisis—diverging more and more from what’s required by countries, industry, further education… and students.
Computers are key to bridging this chasm: only when they do the calculating is math applicable to hard questions across many contexts. Real-life math has been transformed by computer-based calculation; now mainstream math education needs this fundamental change too.
computerbasedmath.org is the project to perform this reset. We’re building a completely new math curriculum with computer-based computation at its heart, while campaigning at all levels to redefine math education away from historical hand-calculating techniques and toward real-life problem-solving situations that drive high-concept math understanding and experience.
Today, at the CBM education summit in New York, we announced a partnership with Wolfram Research to bundle a free copy of Mathematica and the Wolfram Language into future Raspbian images. We believe this will make the Pi a first-class platform for teaching CBM techniques to children of all ages. As Conrad Wolfram said today: “Coders will be able to use the power of Mathematica’s maths out of the box, not only enriching what they can do but also showing off the power and importance of maths.”
Future Raspbian images will ship with the Wolfram Language and Mathematica by default; existing users with at least 600MB of free space on their SD card can install them today by typing:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wolfram-engine
You’ll find Mathematica in the app launcher under the Education menu.
We’d like to thank the team at Wolfram Research for the enormous amount of effort they’ve put to get the Wolfram Language and Mathematica running well on the Pi. Over the next few months we’ll be running a series of blog posts from Wolfram exploring some of the neat tricks you can get up to with them. This is going to be fun!
This is pretty awesome considering an investment in a $50 Raspberry Pi starter kit bundle gives you access to
Mathematica, one of the most powerful math software titles available. And it's even more awesome when you consider that a copy of Mathematica will set you back a minimum of @275 for the personal/home (not for professional use) edition running under Windows.
Pretty good deal if you ask me.
