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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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Anonymous functions - the  lambda keyword


The keyword lambda is used in Python to define anonymous functions, that is; functions without a name and described by a single expression. You might just want to perform an operation on a function that can be expressed by a simple expression without naming this function and without defining this function by a lengthy def block.

Note

The name lambda originates from a special branch of calculus and mathematical logic, the -calculus.

For instance, to compute the following expression, we may use SciPy’s function quad, which requires the function to be integrated as its first argument and the integration bounds as the next two arguments:

Here, the function to integrate is just a simple one-liner and we use the lambda keyword to define it:

import scipy.integrate as si
si.quad(lambda x: x ** 2 + 5, 0, 1)

The syntax is as follows:

lambda parameter_list: expression

The definition of the lambda function can only consist of a single expression and in particular...

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

Authors (3)

author image
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