Here is a result that takes a special function called FresnelC to express, but Mathematica knows all about special functions. This surface is generated by the implicit equation . This defines a function called norm , which gives the geometric distance from the origin to a point. Now norm can be used for points in any number of dimensions and for algebraic as well as numeric calculations. All of this flexibility doesn't come at the cost of speed though.
Notebooks are like word-processing documents since they can contain text, images, and formulas.
But Mathematica is smarter than any word processor could hope to be. But the difference between Mathematica and ordinary formula editors is that Mathematica can figure out the math. Mathematica also has a communications protocol named MathLink , which allows it to communicate and share data with other programs through such add-ons as Mathematica Link for Excel .