6.8 Tuesday, November 10, 2015

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Top new questions this week: 
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[How to draw cylinders inside a cube] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98724/how-to-draw-cylinders-inside-a-cube

I want to create the following graphic (ignore the unit vectors).

What I do is the following (not the most elegent and smart way I guess:-)!):

1) Use the code below to generate randomly distributed ...

- asked by dimitris (23 votes), answered by ybeltukov (37 votes)

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[Sparse Cholesky Decomposition] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98702/sparse-cholesky-decomposition

I am working with square matrices with a special form, which for 
large rank ($> 100,000$) would be best stored and manipulated 
as a SparseArray.  I believe that the Cholesky decomposition of these  ...

- asked by Eric Brown (17 votes), answered by J. M. (16 votes)

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[Histogram3D with various colors and textures on cuboids’ faces] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98687/histogram3d-with-various-colors-and-textures-on-cuboids-faces

I’m trying to produce an Histogram3D-like graph, but with a little more customization.

In particular I want to manually specify the color of each cuboid and to print some information on the top ...

- asked by glance (14 votes), answered by Taiki (10 votes)

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[Can anyone explain this weird Plot3D error?] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98813/can-anyone-explain-this-weird-plot3d-error

This is more of a fun question because I see the source of the error, but cannot explain what Plot3D is doing. Can you figure it out?

L = 111; 
X = Table[{0, 0}, {n, 1, L}]; 
X3D[n_, m_] :=  ...

- asked by lynvie (13 votes), answered by Michael E2 (6 votes)

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[Piecewise imposes internal boundaries in NDSolve - is this expected?] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98734/piecewise-imposes-internal-boundaries-in-ndsolve-is-this-expected

In the following code I used True as the predicate for DirichletCondition and found that the boundary condition was applied not only at the boundary of the specified region but also at the internal ...

- asked by Simon Woods (13 votes), answered by user21 (8 votes)

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[What is the difference between a .wl package and a .m package?] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98981/what-is-the-difference-between-a-wl-package-and-a-m-package

In Mathematica 10.x, one now has both .wl Wolfram Language Packages and .m Wolfram Mathematica Packages.

What’s the difference? Is one of the two formats to be preferred in certain situations and, ...

- asked by murray (12 votes)

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[Defer, Hold, Unevaluated, Inactivate – which one when?] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98874/defer-hold-unevaluated-inactivate-which-one-when

What are some guidelines on which function to select from among the superficially similar functions Defer, Hold, Unevaluated, and Inactivate?

Consider, for example:

Defer[Defer[Sum[1/k^2, {k, 1,  ...

- asked by murray (12 votes)

================================== Greatest hits from previous weeks: ==================================

[Python-style plots in Mathematica] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/84877/python-style-plots-in-mathematica

I love making plots in Mathematica. And I love to spend a lot of time making high-quality plots that maximize readability and aesthetics. For most cases, Mathematica can make very beautiful images, ...

- asked by Pablo Galindo Salgado (49 votes), answered by halirutan (49 votes)

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[What are the most common pitfalls awaiting new users?] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/18393/what-are-the-most-common-pitfalls-awaiting-new-users

As you may already know, Mathematica is a wonderful piece of software. However, it has a few characteristics that tend to confuse new (and sometimes not-so-new) users. That can be clearly seen from ...

- asked by belisarius has settled (278 votes), answered by Michael E2 (148 votes)

================================== Can you answer these? ==================================

[How do I determine which ChartElementDataFunction is Automatic?] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98820/how-do-i-determine-which-chartelementdatafunction-is-automatic

In the course of exploring @kglr's answer to Edmund's question gain 
some insight into how I might answer my own question here, I came across the 
undocumented System`ChartElementData function, which  ...

- asked by Pillsy (7 votes)

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[Control Front End in "mathlink" mode] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98686/control-front-end-in-mathlink-mode

Note: This question was already posted in the Wolfram community.

In a terminal math session, we can start a front end (FE) easily by launching it though LinkLaunch or by using functions provided in ...

- asked by halirutan (11 votes)

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[Multivariate Path Construction using Sobol numbers] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/98914/multivariate-path-construction-using-sobol-numbers

I am sharing my code,which I have tried to perform as per the instruction mentioned below. Please correct it so that I could get my output.

Instruction: Use the first m dimensions of the Sobol vector ...

- asked by Pankaj Mani (1 vote)