Numeric Newbie

[jsaul]

* myk [2003-02-17 03:48]:
> Hi there.  I'm looking at Python for some scientific/numerical
> programming.  I'm kind of confused as to what is out there.  It seems
> like it boils down to scientificpython, scipy, numpy and numarray.

ScientificPython != SciPy
numarray != Numeric
numpy == Numeric

> Furthermore, numarray has some additional modules like "linearalgebra",
> "FFT", "convolve".

Not really. "LinearAlgebra" and "FFT" are modules of Numeric.
"convolve" is a function of Numeric.

> So what do I need to install?  It's nice to see so
> many options but it's not clear what is good, current, and has a future.

Numarray is the successor of Numeric. It is meant to be a
re-design and currently is implemented mostly in Python. Therefore
is is rather slow compared to Numeric, which is implemented mostly
in C. AFAIK, large parts of numarray will also be implemented in
C one day, so that the difference in speed will not persist
forever.

You can safely install both and check yourself which is faster;
many features are present in both Numeric and Numarray. Since for
me speed is really an issue, I currently use Numeric; it's great.

There is a numpy-discussion mailing list which might be
interesting for you to subscribe to, in order to always be up to
date.

Cheers, jsaul
-- 
Palo pa'que aprenda que aquí sí hay honor!
[Rubén Blades]