UC Irvine, Math 9, Introduction to Programming for Numerical Analysis (Python portion)#

These are the notes and accompanying videos for the second half of UC Irvine Math 9. This portion of Math 9 is intended as an introduction to the Python programming language. In the previous half of the class, we studied Matlab, and we will see that many aspects of Python (especially the Python libraries NumPy and Matplotlib) are closely modeled on Matlab. Also, essentially all of the programming concepts we learned in the Matlab portion of the class will still be relevant to Python. On the other hand, the scope of Python is much broader than the scope of Matlab.

From the time it is introduced late in Week 1, the library NumPy will play an essential role through all of the subsequent sections. Some of our topics, such as Pillow image processing, have been chosen, not because they themselves are fundamental, but because they will increase your knowledge of NumPy. The deeper your understanding of NumPy, the more readily you will be able to perform numerical analysis using Python.

The Python portion of Math 9 is divided into four weeks (or four units) of material. Most of these weeks are further divided into several “notebooks”.