The book gives both an introduction in the field of computer simulation and the use of the Mathematica programming language. It shows the use of computer simulation as a research tool in the physical, biological, chemical, geological, astronomical, economical and social sciences.
The authors show how to create computer simulate programs and how the results obtained by running these programs are interpretable. The program examples are subdivided into two parts, probabilistic systems (e.g. the random walk, the Ising model, Darwinian evolution, spreading phenomena) and cellular automata (e.g. the game of live, avalanches, the Q2R Ising model, traffic, forest fires). To understand the examples, a minimal background in Mathematica is assumed. Therefore a short introduction in Mathematica is given in the Appendices.
A CD-ROM accompanying this book is a cross-platform disc that is compatible with Macintosh, NeXT, Windows and most UNIX computer systems. The CD contains many of the computer simulations described in the book, animations and graphical images. The CD also includes software to view all of the images, animations, and Mathematica notebooks.