Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Overview of this book

This book covers the unexplored secrets of Python, delve into its depths, and uncover its mysteries. You’ll unearth secrets related to the implementation of the standard library, by looking at how modules actually work. You’ll understand the implementation of collections, decimals, and fraction modules. If you haven’t used decorators, coroutines, and generator functions much before, as you make your way through the recipes, you’ll learn what you’ve been missing out on. We’ll cover internal special methods in detail, so you understand what they are and how they can be used to improve the engineering decisions you make. Next, you’ll explore the CPython interpreter, which is a treasure trove of secret hacks that not many programmers are aware of. We’ll take you through the depths of the PyPy project, where you’ll come across several exciting ways that you can improve speed and concurrency. Finally, we’ll take time to explore the PEPs of the latest versions to discover some interesting hacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 6. Working with Python's Math Module

In this chapter, we will cover Python'smathmodule and the various mathematical functions provided in it. We will also talk about math-related modules, including cryptography and statistics. Specifically, we will discuss the following topics:

  • Using the math module's functions and constants
  • Working with complex numbers
  • Improving decimal numbers
  • Increasing accuracy with fractions
  • Working with random numbers
  • Using the secrets module
  • Implementing basic statistics
  • Improving functionality with comath

Python uses a hierarchy of abstract base classes to represent number-like classes. While the types defined by the abstract classes cannot be instantiated, they are used to create a numbers tower of subclasses: number -> complex -> real -> rational -> integral.

The reason for this is to allow functions that accept numbers as arguments to determine the properties of the arguments, thus allowing for backend functionality to be applied without user intervention...