A Primer On Scientific Programming With Python 3rd Pdf File
While teaching, computers have become a very useful tool. For mathematics in particular, the analysis is often used and illustrated by actually computing something, an equation that can be solved analytically or numerically, integrals and derivatives can be evaluated, models for physical, chemical, or biological systems are used for simulations, etc. Popular languages for symbolic computing are maple and mathematica, and when it it becomes numerical, certainly matlab, and for more advanced problems one may use fortran, C, or any of its variants and there are many other languages around that are used for a first course in computer programming, although to all of them are equally suitable for mathematical applications.
There is a fuzzy boundary between the use of such a program just for the illustration of a mathematical definition or algorithm on one side and on the other side learning to program, i.e., where the computer science aspect rather than the mathematics is the main goal. The latter does not need mathematics and can be illustrated with typical computer science algorithms like sorting, or string manipulation, or searching in a list, etc. In a mathematics educational context, it is clearly most efficient to combine both and illustrate the programming aspects with familiar mathematical examples and at the same time illustrate how programming can push the mathematical simulation beyond the limit of computation with pen and paper. That combination is the choice made in this book.
And of course in the background there is the pure technical aspect of learning the semantics and the syntax of the language too, which in this case is Python. Python is certainly one of these languages which, besides of allowing to program the solution of mathematical problems, is also fit for use as a first introduction to computer science aspects.
A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python, 5th. A first introduction to computer programming of scientific applications, using the high-level Python. Hans Petter Langtangen. A Primer on Scientific. Scarlet Diva Movie Torrent Download. Programming with Python. Download book-examples.tar.gz, store this file in some folder of your choice, and unpack it using WinZip on Windows or the. Then the formulas are encapsulated in functions in the third chapter. In the next chapter, the input to.
It is particularly popular because it is freely available, it can be used interactively (style matlab, maple and the likes) as a scripting language and it has all the advanced features that one would expect from a modern computer language. An extra advantage is that it can easily be linked with software written in other languages. The latter is in important aspect because computer programs to perform standard tasks or solve numerical problems are around since the middle of the 20th century and many powerful packages are available.
Part of the success of a (new) computer language will depend on the fact that it runs for free on many different platforms, that the learning curve is not too steep, and that existing software can still be used. Python obviously is a language satisfying these criterions and moreover it has native constructs like objects and classes, so that also from a computer science viewpoint, it is interesting to introduce the student to something more than just while or for loops and if-then-else constructions. This is already the fifth edition of the book, so it has been polished for a number of years. Although Python 3 has been around for a while, Lantangen has chosen to still keep his 2.7 version, basically to keep the large amount of software what is already available for version 2. One has to check every line of the existing software to migrate to version 3 because some features behave differently in Python 2 and Python 3. There is however an automatic tool to convert from Python 2.7 to Python 3.5. Hence the choice that Lantangen made here is not a strong restriction, but I am sure the migration will be made in a future edition.
It is a textbook with many examples and many exercises, printed on 945 glossy pages. It requires a table or a desk to read because 2.2 kg is not easily manageable in your hands or on your lap. It is not intended to be a first course in programming, nor is it a first course in numerical mathematics. The reader should at least be familiar with the basics of programming. As Lantangen states in the introduction, it is the main intention to learn the student to think as a programmer should so that he or she can produce programs in a quicker and more reliable way. What Lantangen does not mention, perhaps because it is obvious, is that most effort will go into learning the syntax and the behavior of the computer language Python, or Python 2.7 to be more precise, but remarks usually indicate when there is a difference with Python 3.