The first step for installing IPython is to install Python. Instructions for the various platforms differ but the instructions for each of them can be found on the Python home page at http://www.python.org. IPython requires Python 2.7 or ≥ 3.3. This book will use 3.5. Both Python and IPython are open source software, so downloads and installations are free.

A standard Python installation includes the pip package manager. pip is a handy command-line tool that can be used to download and install various Python libraries. pip will be used throughout this book when libraries are required. Once Python is installed, IPython can be installed with the following command:

pip install ipython

IPython comes with a test suite called iptest. To run it, simply issue the following command:

iptest

A series of tests will be run. It is possible (and likely on Windows) that some libraries will be missing, causing the associated tests to fail. Simply use pip to install those libraries and...