Welcome back to my blog! I spent the bulk of this week doing more research into the idea of neural networks for my project direction, and thinking about how to get to my deliverable in general. Much of this was informed by online recordings of Wolfram U courses. These are free, public videos of people teaching a certain aspect of Wolfram language usage.

Publishing notebooks

While before I was considering finding some way to make a website where my classifying/predicting function could be hosted, this seemed a little daunting; after all, I have zero clue how to handle web design. The videos I was watching also felt a little disconnected from real life. So, I registered to participate in a bunch of upcoming Wolfram U live classes in hopes of spurring my imagination.

The first course I signed up for was in notebook design and creation — basically the fundamentals of creating a codeable document in Mathematica. I was fairly familiar with the subject going in. By no means was I an expert, but I familiarized myself with the layout between my previous coursework and recent tinkering with the software. I expected a straightforward class that I could zone out in, knowing all the content, but I actually found myself learning a lot- especially about publication. Notebooks, basically interactive environments where the code and output are displayed, can be either uploaded or deployed to the cloud. 

To my understanding, uploading a notebook allows you to visit the notebook’s edifice online, and then download it to make adjustments to on your own version of Mathematica. While this would be an ideal situation, I haven’t figured out how to interact with the notebooks online when they’re published, and also you need a license to use Mathematica in its full- which costs a non-insignificant amount of money. With deployed notebooks, they’re put out on Wolfram cloud (basically browser Mathematica), and are much more interactive. The problem with these notebooks are that they cannot access certain web-related functions, which could be an issue with the project in later stages.

My goal would be to upload a notebook (likely deployed in cloud form to be easily accessed) which people could specify the parameters of the battle’s current state, which would be fed into a classifying function to output a best course of action.

Notebook interface

If I want my deliverable to be a notebook of sorts, it can’t be a messy lump of code- I need to actually make the code 1. presentable and easy to understand, and 2. repeatedly interactive without getting stuck upon multiple evaluations. So, I also signed up for a class on notebook manipulation and presentation upon export. I’ll report back on my progress next week! Right now, the only parts of a notebook I know how to make look nice are: manipulate, animate, and cell formatting. I’ve attached a notebook URL to demonstrate this.

I have a feeling that this week is going to go well!

Till death (or senior project) do us part,

Alex R.