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You're reading from  Scientific Computing with Python 3

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2016
Reading LevelBeginner
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781786463517
Edition1st Edition
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Authors (3):
Claus Führer
Claus Führer
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Claus Führer

Claus Führer is a professor of scientific computations at Lund University, Sweden. He has an extensive teaching record that includes intensive programming courses in numerical analysis and engineering mathematics across various levels in many different countries and teaching environments. Claus also develops numerical software in research collaboration with industry and received Lund University's Faculty of Engineering Best Teacher Award in 2016.
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Basic elements of SymPy


Here we introduce the basic elements of SymPy. You will find it favorable to be already familiar with classes and data types in Python.

Symbols - the basis of all formulas

The basic construction element to build a formula in SymPy is the symbol. As we saw in the introductory example, a symbol is created by the command symbols. This SymPy command generates symbol objects from a given string:

x, y, mass, torque = symbols('x y mass torque')

It is actually a short form of following command:

symbol_list=[symbols(l) for l in 'x y mass torque'.split()]

followed by a unpacking step to obtain variables:

 x, y, mass, torque = symbol_list

The arguments of the command define the string representation of the symbol. The variable name of the symbol is often chosen identical to its string representation, but this is not required by the language:

row_index=symbols('i',integer=True)
print(row_index**2)  # returns i**2

Here, we also defined that the symbol is assumed to be an integer.

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Scientific Computing with Python 3
Published in: Dec 2016Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781786463517

Authors (3)

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Claus Führer

Claus Führer is a professor of scientific computations at Lund University, Sweden. He has an extensive teaching record that includes intensive programming courses in numerical analysis and engineering mathematics across various levels in many different countries and teaching environments. Claus also develops numerical software in research collaboration with industry and received Lund University's Faculty of Engineering Best Teacher Award in 2016.
Read more about Claus Führer