Introduction and Installation

Welcome to the Math Learning Center Python Instructional Video Series.  If you are watching this, odds are you are taking a MATH 151 or 152 course which has a Python component.  In this video, I want to show you how to download the software that you need onto your own machine, how to execute that software, and then a few packages that you will want to load before you run any labs.  To begin with then, you can go first of all to the Calclab home page, which is calclab.math.tamu.edu-the page I have up now.  And when you go to that page, you see a link that says "Using Python". So we want to click on that link, and it tells you that "Outside of the lab, you will want to install these on your own computer."  While it sounds expensive, everything is free!  So, the way you download it is you go to the website www.anaconda.com.  It is linked from the Calclab homepage.  So when you go to the website, you click on "Products", then click on "Individual Edition", and then you click on "Download", and when you do, it takes you down to a list of installers.  You choose your operating system.  I'm working on a Windows Machine, so I download Python 3.7.  Now the installation took almost 30 minutes, so I've already done that, so you don't have to watch that on this video.  A little side note-for myself, I tried to download the 64-Bit and it froze up on me, but the 32-Bit worked just fine-as I said, though, it may take a while.  So once you download the file, you execute it and it extracts all the packages.  Then you are ready to start it by going to your Start Menu, and you can either search for "Anaconda", or you can just scroll down since it is near the top anyway, and you click on the Anaconda folder and you will find "Jupyter Notebook".  Jupyter Notebook is your interface you will use to run Python.  So when I click on "Jupyter Notebook", a window pops up, and then it opens up a web browser in Chrome (you may have to specify which brower you use the first time you do it).  So I want to open up a Python worksheet, so I am going to the right side and click "New", then "Python 3".  That opens up a Jupyter Notebook.  Now I am ready to begin entering Jupyter code.  I want to close by showing you some packages you are going to load.  We are going to be focusing on the symbolic use of Python.  You may focus on numerical if you're taking ENGR 102, so you may be familiar with the NUMPY package.  We are going to work with the Symbolic Package, which is SYMPY.  So every time we start a worksheet, we are going to import all the commands from that package.  So we are going to type " from sympy import * ", which means import ALL the commands from the sympy package.  Sometimes we are going to import more than one package, so you might want to import the package with a code name by typing " import sympy as sp ".  Any time you want to execute a command you'll type "sp." then the name of the command.  We are going to be using the sympy package extensively, so if we import everything to begin with, then we don't have to type the prefix; we can just execute the command.  You press the "Shift" key and Enter to execute the line.  You'll see there is a * here next to the line which becomes a 1, so it has now just executed that first line.   So we are now able to begin working with the Python package and doing many different things which will be demonstrated in future videos.