Python

Python is an Open-Source, easy to learn, highly readable, interpreted programming language. It has a clean syntax that makes it perfect for quick scripting, and will allow you to focus in the algorithms and science instead of the details of the programming itself! While the vanilla Python allows you to do many incredible things, most of the power of Python is on its libraries, packages of built-in functions and routines that allow you to work with matrices, plot, animate, and optimize your code without having to do it yourself.

Downloading and Installing Python

For this workshop, we will utilize Python 3, along with three libraries:(i) Numpy: for scientific and numerical routines, (ii)Matlotlib: for easy-to-use visualization and (iii) Jupyter, notebooks that integrate standard text and equations, with coding blocks and built-in visualization. We recommend the installation of Anaconda, this toolkit has all that you will need for the workshop, Python 3 and the required libraries (and many more useful libraries that you may discover in the future!), please follow the installation instructions on their website and you will be ready to for the next step.

Introductory Programming

To download, click here,  and extract the file from the zip.

The first step to load the notebook, is to opening Jupyter in your browser:

  • Windows users run the Jupyter Notebook application installed by Anaconda.
  • macOS and Linux users can use the jupyter notebook command on the terminal.

Here, you will see a file navigator, navigate to the directory where the notebook is stored, and click on it, you are ready to learn the basics of Python programming!

If you encounter any issues with the download, starting the notebook, or any additional assistance send us an email and we will help you out.