[SciPy-user] numpy version of Interactive Data Analysis tutorial available

[Stef Mientki]

hello Perry and Robert,

Your tutorial is really an impressive work of art.
I still consider myself a newbie, because I've more questions then 
answers ;-)
I read the first chapter and it's written very clear and also takes the 
user in small steps to larger applications.

Now I think I miss one important thing,
At the end of chapter 1 there are a few exercises,
exercise 5: "create some function, display it, compute the FFT"

I doubt if any new reader is able to perform the last step: "compute the 
FFT".
- how does the reader know what libraries to import
- how does the reader know what the exact function name is
- how does the reader know what the function parameters and the return 
values are, and about certain constraints

In other words, I didn't find anything on "help", how to search for 
certain functions.
I've to admit that this is one of the biggest problems for newbies,
Python is so large, that's often very difficult to find the right answer.
It's also strongly dependent on the editor / IDE you use what help 
functions are available,
and I think IPython has (for a plain text interface) some powerful commands.

So in short, I would suggest (for your second edition ;-) to add a 
paragraph on getting help to the first chapter.

thanks for the tutorial,
cheers,
Stef Mientki




Perry Greenfield wrote:
> I have updated the "Using Python for Interactive Data Analysis"  
> tutorial to use numpy instead of numarray (finally!). There are  
> further improvements I would like to make in its organization and  
> formatting (in the process including suggestions others have made to  
> that end), but I'd rather get this version out, which I believe  
> addresses all the content changes needed to make it useful for numpy,  
> without delaying it any further.
>
> The tutorial, as well as other supporting material and information,  
> can be obtained from:
>
> http://www.scipy.org/wikis/topical_software/Tutorial
>
> I'm sure errors remain; please let me know of any you find.
>
> Perry
>
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