At some point, you may have to differentiate a function that is not a simple polynomial, and you may need to do this in some kind of automated fashion, for example, if you are writing software for education. The Python scientific stack includes a package called SymPy, which allows us to create and manipulate symbolic mathematical expressions within Python. In particular, SymPy can perform differentiation and integration of symbolic functions, just like a mathematician.
In this recipe, we will create a symbolic function, and then differentiate and integrate this function using the SymPy library.
Getting ready
Unlike some of the other scientific Python packages, there does not seem to be a standard alias under which SymPy is imported in the literature. Instead the documentation uses a star import at several points, which is not in line with the PEP8 style guide. This is possibly to make the mathematical...