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

Parameters and arguments


When defining a function, its input variables are called the parameters of the function. The input used when executing the function is called its argument.

Passing arguments - by position and by keyword

We will consider the previous example again, where the function takes two parameters, namely x1 and x2.

Their names serve to distinguish the two numbers, which in this case cannot be interchanged without altering the result. The first parameter defines the number from which the second parameter is subtracted. When subtract is called, every parameter is replaced by an argument. Only the order of the arguments matters; the arguments can be any objects. For instance, we may call the following:

z = 3 
e = subtract(5,z)

Besides this standard way of calling a function, which is by passing the arguments by position, it might sometimes be convenient to pass arguments using keywords. The names of the parameters are the keywords; consider the following instance:

z = 3 
...