matplotlib Code

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A whirlwind tour of python and the standard library
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This is a quick-and-dirty introduction to the python language for the impatient
 scientist.
 There are many top notch, comprehensive introductions and tutorials for
 python.
 For a free tutorial, the best place to start is the official python tutorial,
 which can be read online
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http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html
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 or downloaded
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http://docs.python.org/download.html
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 in a variety of formats.
 There are over 100 python tutorials collected online.
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http://www.awaretek.com/tutorials.html
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There are also many excellent books.
 Oriented to newbies is Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Python which can also be
 read online
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http://diveintopython.org/toc/index.html
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, though for absolute newbies even this may be too hard 
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.
 For experienced programmers, David Beasley's Python Essential Reference
 is an excellent instroduciton to python, but is a bit dated since it only
 covers python2.1 
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.
 Likwise Alex Martelli's Python in a Nutshell is highly regarded and a bit
 more current -- a 2nd edition is in the works
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.
 And The Python Cookbook is an extremely useful collection of python idioms,
 tips and tricks 
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.
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But the typical scientist I encounter wants to solve a specific problem,
 eg to make a certain kind of graph, or numerically integrate an equation,
 or fit some data to a parametric model, and don't have the time or interest
 to read several books or tutorials to get what they want.
 This guide is for them: a short overview of the language to help them get
 to what they want (numeric, scipy, matplotlib, mayavi, vtk) as quickly
 as possible.
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Hello Python
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Python is a dynamically typed, object oriented, interpreted language.
 Interpreted means that your program interacts with the python interpreter,
 similar to Matlab, Perl, Tcl and Java, and unlike FORTRAN, C, or C++ which
 are compiled.
 So let's fire up the python interpreter and get started.
 I'm not going to cover installing python -- it's standard on linux boxes
 and for windows there is a friendly GUI installer.
 On windows, you can click 
\family typewriter 
Start->All Programs->Python 2.4->Python (command line)
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 or better yet, install 
\family typewriter 
ipython
\family default 
, a python shell on steroids, and use that.
 On linux / unix systems, you just need to type 
\family typewriter 
python
\family default 
 at the command line.
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\backslash 
begin{lstlisting}
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1 >>> 2+2
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4
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2 >>> 2-2
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0
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3 >>>
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