NumPy

NumPy is an extension to the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large library of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. The ancestor of NumPy, Numeric, was originally created by Jim Hugunin with contributions from several other developers. In 2005, Travis Oliphant created NumPy by incorporating features of the competing Numarray into Numeric, with extensive modifications. NumPy is open source and has many contributors.

Traits

NumPy targets the CPython reference implementation of Python, which is a non-optimizing bytecode interpreter. Mathematical algorithms written for this version of Python often run much slower than compiled equivalents. NumPy address the slowness problem partly by providing multidimensional arrays and functions and operators that operate efficiently on arrays, requiring (re)writing some code, mostly inner loops using NumPy. Thus any algorithm that can be expressed primarily as operations on arrays and matrices can run almost as quickly as the equivalent C code.