Beginner's Mathematica Tutorial

This document is designed to act as a tutorial for an individual who has had no prior experience with Mathematica. For a more advanced tutorial, walk through the Mathematica built in tutorial located at Help > Tutorial on the Mathematica Task Bar.
Starting the Program
1. Start Mathematica. After the program starts, you should see something similar to that shown in Figure 1.
2. It is possible that the Basic Input Palette is not visible at startup. To activate this window, go File > Palettes > Basic Input

Using Mathematica
1. Mathematica is a symbolic manipulator. To assign a variable, simply type it in the Input Window. The enter in the command, you need to hit “Shift + Enter”.
1. Type in “x = 1” then hit “Shift + Enter”
2. Type in “y = a+b;” then hit “Shift + Enter” (note the semicolon here!)
3. Type “z = x + y” then hit “Shift + Enter”

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