Book Image

Advanced Python Programming

By : Dr. Gabriele Lanaro, Quan Nguyen, Sakis Kasampalis
Book Image

Advanced Python Programming

By: Dr. Gabriele Lanaro, Quan Nguyen, Sakis Kasampalis

Overview of this book

This Learning Path shows you how to leverage the power of both native and third-party Python libraries for building robust and responsive applications. You will learn about profilers and reactive programming, concurrency and parallelism, as well as tools for making your apps quick and efficient. You will discover how to write code for parallel architectures using TensorFlow and Theano, and use a cluster of computers for large-scale computations using technologies such as Dask and PySpark. With the knowledge of how Python design patterns work, you will be able to clone objects, secure interfaces, dynamically choose algorithms, and accomplish much more in high performance computing. By the end of this Learning Path, you will have the skills and confidence to build engaging models that quickly offer efficient solutions to your problems. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: • Python High Performance - Second Edition by Gabriele Lanaro • Mastering Concurrency in Python by Quan Nguyen • Mastering Python Design Patterns by Sakis Kasampalis
Table of Contents (41 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 3. Fast Array Operations with NumPy and Pandas

NumPy is the de facto standard for scientific computing in Python. It extends Python with a flexible multidimensional array that allows fast and concise mathematical calculations.

NumPy provides common data structures and algorithms designed to express complex mathematical operations using a concise syntax. The multidimensional array, numpy.ndarray, is internally based on C arrays. Apart from the performance benefits, this choice allows NumPy code to easily interface with the existing C and FORTRAN routines; NumPy is helpful in bridging the gap between Python and the legacy code written using those languages.

In this chapter, we will learn how to create and manipulate NumPy arrays. We will also explore the NumPy broadcasting feature used to rewrite complex mathematical expressions in an efficient and succinct manner.

Pandas is a tool that relies heavily on NumPy and provides additional data structures and algorithms targeted toward data...