Day 5

Overview

In today’s class, we will introduce the NumPy library. NumPy is a powerful library that is widely used for numerical applications. Its main data structure, the NumPy array, allows for multi-dimensional arrays that can take advantage of a property called “broadcasting”. NumPy is built on C (a compiled language), so can be much faster than standard Python alone.

We then will move our code to a Python module. This will allow us to import our functions into other Python files or the Jupyter notebook.

Lessons

Lesson Title	Objectives	Questions
Working with Numpy Arrays	Be able to name the differences between Python lists and numpy arrays. Understand the idea of broadcasting.	What are the differences between NumPy arrays and lists? How can I use NumPy to do calculations?
Rewriting the Distance Function	Rewrite calculate distance function for numpy arrays	How can I rewrite functions to take advantage of NumPy element-wise operation and broadcasting?
Creating a Python Module	Put Python code into a module (.py file) Import functions from our module.	What is a Python module?

Discussions and Assignments

• Class Warm Up
• Group Homework Assignment - Day 5
• Individual Homework Assignment 2