Graphics and Plotting

Mathematica has a large number of built-in graphics programs for plotting and exploring mathematics graphically and for plotting and visualizing data.  Graphs and plots are effective ways of conveying complex information.  It is important to learn how to create and manipulate plots and graphics.  Mathematica is very rich in its graphical functions—we will explore just a small subset of all its capabilities.  We can get an idea of how many plotting routines are available by using a wildcard:

While Mathematica has a large number of plotting routines, no one program does everything we need.  It can be useful to export numbers and graphics from Mathematica and operate on them individually or with other specialized programs.  The number of different creative graphical solutions available grows geometrically with the number of different graphical tools that are mastered.
Here, we will just produce a number of examples of plots and graphics...

Changing the Appearance of Simple Plots

Controlling Precision and Size: The Mesh
(And an example of Interactive Control over Plot Appearance--Manipulate)

Plotting Multiple Curves and Plot Filling

Plotting Parametric Curves

Plotting Data

Plotting Data with Screen Interaction

Worked Example: Graphical Data Exploring of the Elements

Representations of 3D: Plot3D

Lower Dimensional Representations of 3D: ContourPlot

Graphics Primitives

A Worked Example using Graphics Primitives: The Wulff Construction

Animations

Worked Animation Example with Graphics Primitives: Visualizing the Random Walk

A Worked Example: Common Tangent Construction and Spinodal Points for a Single Curve
(Part A: The Spinodal Region)

A Worked Example: Common Tangent Construction and Spinodal Points  (Part B: Computing the Common Tangent)

A Worked Example: Common Tangent Construction and Spinodal Points (Part C: Creating Graphics Objects and Combining Plots)

A Worked Example: Common Tangent Construction and Spinodal Points  (Part D: Wrapping it up in a Tidy Module)

A Worked Example: Common Tangent Construction and Spinodal Points  (Part E: Visualize the Fruit)

Created by Wolfram Mathematica 6.0  (28 August 2007)