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

Modules


In Python, a module is simply a file containing classes and functions. By importing the file in your session or script, the functions and classes become usable.

Introduction

Python comes with many different libraries by default. You may also want to install more of those for specific purposes, such as optimization, plotting, reading/writing file formats, image handling, and so on. NumPy and SciPy are two important examples of such libraries, matplotlib for plotting is another one. At the end of this chapter, we will list some useful libraries.

To use a library, you may either:

  • Load only certain objects from a library, for example from NumPy:
            from numpy import array, vander
  • Or load the entire library:
            from numpy import *
  • Or give access to an entire library by creating a namespace with the library name:

            import numpy
            ...
            numpy.array(...)

    Prefixing a function from the library with the namespace gives access to this function and distinguishes...