Book Image

Scientific Computing with Python 3

By : Claus Führer, Jan Erik Solem, Olivier Verdier
Book Image

Scientific Computing with Python 3

By: Claus Führer, Jan Erik Solem, Olivier Verdier

Overview of this book

Python can be used for more than just general-purpose programming. It is a free, open source language and environment that has tremendous potential for use within the domain of scientific computing. This book presents Python in tight connection with mathematical applications and demonstrates how to use various concepts in Python for computing purposes, including examples with the latest version of Python 3. Python is an effective tool to use when coupling scientific computing and mathematics and this book will teach you how to use it for linear algebra, arrays, plotting, iterating, functions, polynomials, and much more.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Scientific Computing with Python 3
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Acknowledgement
Preface
References

Booleans


Boolean is a datatype named after George Boole (1815-1864). A Boolean variable can take only two values, True or False. The main use of this type is in logical expressions. Here are some examples:

a = True 
b = 30 > 45   # b gets the value False

Boolean expressions are often used in conjunction with the if statement:

if x > 0:
   print("positive")
else:
   print("nonpositive)

Boolean operators

Boolean operations are performed using the and, or, and not keywords in Python:

True and False # False
False or True # True
(30 > 45) or (27 < 30) # True
not True # False
not (3 > 4) # True

The operators follow some precedence rules (refer to section Executing scripts in Chapter 1, Getting started) which would make the parentheses in the third line and in the last obsolete (it is a good practice to use them anyway to increase the readability of your code). Note that the and operator is implicitly chained in the following Boolean expressions:

a...