Mathematica Demonstrations Project
This is a little gem that I found awhile back. Mathematica/Wolfram have a project whereby people can author a CDF document (computable document format). Once created they can be published online for free. The set of online CDFs was originally named the Mathematica Demonstrations Project (hence the title). However, it now looks to have been renamed to the Wolfram Demonstrations Project.
The CDF documents can be played using the Mathematica CDF Player. The player is free to download and often CDFs are better on desktop. The usefulness of the player depends upon what CDFs have been published in a given area. Of course you could just build your own if you can’t find what you need!
The CDF documents tare written using the Wolfram Language. I haven’t gone as far as creating any myself so can’t comment on the language. Instead I tend to see if there are useful ones already uploaded to the website.
How to Download the CDF Player
You can download the CDF player for desktop from the following link: Wolfram CDF Player Download. They have versions available for various platforms and it’s a simple case of downloading and installing (it is big so takes awhile).
Finding Useful CDF Documents
You can get useful CDFs from the project website: Wolfram Demonstrations Project. Just search for what you are looking for you can often find a lot of available CDF documents that other people have written. In particular there are a number of Actuarial CDF documents and Option Pricing CDF documents. I found the option pricing CDFs were great for getting a feel for the shape of option prices, payoffs, and sensitivities when learning about options.
Original Version of Mathematica Demonstrations Project
This post was originally published in November 2016 on The Art of Quant Finance1www.theartofquantfinance.com. The old website is no longer online. I have re-written the post and re-posted here.
Notes
- 1www.theartofquantfinance.com
