Berlin 2024 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 18: Hacky Hour II (joint session AGI/SOE/AKjDPG)

SOE 18.4: Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 17:00–17:30, MAR 0.011

Computational Notebook as a Modern Multitool for Scientists — •Kirill Vasin — Augsburg University, Augsburg, Germany

Modern computational notebooks, stemming from the 1981 Literate programming concept, are powerful tools like Mathematica, Maple, and Jupyter Notebook. Yet, popular solutions often lack traditional math input support, focusing on specific fields (business analytics, engineering or solely computer algebra) or not being open/freeware.

For physicists, OriginPro, PowerPoint, and paper are preferred, as notebook interfaces are challenging to use efficiently. To address this, we developed WLJS Notebook [https://jerryi.github.io/wljs-docs/], a scientist-designed system based on Wolfram Language. It's open, friendly for mathematicians, allows mixing code and mathematical equations, figures preparation and covers all basic tasks experimentalists need like processing raw data and interactive fitting. With built-in support for various cell types, it facilitates data-driven interactive slides, eliminating export needs of graphs to .png files and syncing data to it. Markdown and plain HTML are used as a default languages for notes and slides.

Accessibility is ensured through export to .html or .pdf. WLJS Notebook runs locally, without internet dependency, and is free.

Keywords: data processing; scientific software; figures preparation; computer algebra; open source