Scientific Computing
Course Resources
Dr. Gladden

• General Python References:
  There are MANY references for the Python programming language, but here a few standard ones that are pretty good.
• The official website: www.python.org
  Here you can download python for your platform, browse official documentation, and find links to other Python related resources around the web.
• Byte of Python:[PDF] This is an open source introductory book by C.H. Swaroop (in PDF) on the Python programming language.  I find it a useful reference to have around.
• Python Handbook:[PDF]  This is based on a trial by Micheal Williams to teach the Computational Physics course at Oxford (UK) using Python.  It is not the most polished and somewhat specific to their system, but is geared more toward scientific computing.
• The Matplotlib (pylab) manual [PDF] :  Nice to have a local copy to figure out how to fine tune things.
• The Scipy documentation page:  Lots of functions and features related to things scientists do on computers.
  
  
• Links to downloadable libraries we will be using:
• Matplotlib (pylab):  A useful plotting library with sytax very similar to Matlab.
• Scipy: Pretty much the broadest scientific python library which is in very active development.
• Numpy:  The mathematical engine behind Scipy (and all these libraries actually).   
• Visual Python (Vpython): Provides a nice set of 3D graphics capabilities which are simple and intuitive.
• Komodo Editor:  A nice cross platform and newly open sourced code editor.