Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-20 Thread David MacQuigg
At 01:41 AM 3/20/2008 +0100, Stef Mientki wrote: I started about a year ago with the Enthought edition http://code.enthought.com/enthon/ This leads to a series of deprecated links, some several months old, and no clear guidance as to what a student should install. This website is a mess!!

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-19 Thread David MacQuigg
Our mandelbrot demo is working nicely, thanks to all the help I've gotten from folks on this list. We are using only the weave package, not the full SciPy install. It would be nice to show some additional examples from SciPy, however, especially tools that students will find useful in later

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-19 Thread Stef Mientki
hi David, David MacQuigg wrote: Our mandelbrot demo is working nicely, thanks to all the help I've gotten from folks on this list. We are using only the weave package, not the full SciPy install. It would be nice to show some additional examples from SciPy, however, especially tools that

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-14 Thread David MacQuigg
I got scipy.weave working in my Mandelbrot demo in Python2.5 under Cygwin, and the speed improvement is comparable to my hand-coded Pyton.h extension module. 1a) Python speed = 678 points/sec 1b) C speed = 115200 points/sec 169X 2a) Python speed = 721 points/sec 2b) C

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-13 Thread David MacQuigg
: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students David, For output graphics, you might want to have a look at http://www.pygame.org/http://www.pygame.org/Pygame. It is a wrapper for the SDL library. It has functionality for creating graphics windows, drawing, sprites, etc. But what might

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-12 Thread John Posner
I'll modify my function to look more like yours, going for more clarity with only a small sacrifice in efficiency. I can't use the nice OOP style, however, because these students have studied only functions. OOP is an advanced topic covered in a later course for computer

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-12 Thread kirby urner
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 5:50 AM, John Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: IMHO, object-oriented programming is like most technologies -- it was developed as a solution to perceived problems. Newbies, who haven't perceived the problems, will have trouble appreciating the solution. -John

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-12 Thread David MacQuigg
At 07:24 PM 3/11/2008 -0700, Rob Malouf wrote: On Mar 11, 2008, at 5:11 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: It would make a nice improvement in this Mandelbrot demo if you could show me a way to significantly improve the speed of the Python I already have, perhaps avoiding the need for C. ... Or,

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-12 Thread Warren Sande
: Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students David, For output graphics, you might want to have a look at Pygame. It is a wrapper for the SDL library. It has functionality for creating graphics windows, drawing, sprites, etc. But what might be of interest for you is the simple

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-11 Thread Steven Bird
- Original Message From: David MacQuigg [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: edu-sig@python.org Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 10:28:21 PM Subject: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students I've been asked to give an intro to Python for a freshman class with 150 students at University of Arizona

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-11 Thread David MacQuigg
Many thanks for the quick and very helpful responses!! At 08:00 PM 3/10/2008 -0700, kirby urner wrote: Just in case you want to look at an all Python solution down to the pixel level (using PIL): http://4dsolutions.net/ocn/fractals.html Very nice!! I like the clear concise explanation of

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-11 Thread Rob Malouf
On Mar 11, 2008, at 5:11 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: It would make a nice improvement in this Mandelbrot demo if you could show me a way to significantly improve the speed of the Python I already have, perhaps avoiding the need for C. Actually, I don't see a clean way to vectorize that inner

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-11 Thread Rob Malouf
On Mar 11, 2008, at 2:57 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: I guess what I should conclude is that when performance is important, don't bother trying to optimize Python. Go straight to C, and get 10 or 100X improvement. That hasn't always been my experience. I found that using psyco and numpy

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-11 Thread kirby urner
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 2:57 PM, David MacQuigg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Very nice!! I like the clear concise explanation of fractals. I'll add this link to whatever I put together. I like the way you construct the color palette, simple but effective. I'll have to play around with

[Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-10 Thread David MacQuigg
I've been asked to give an intro to Python for a freshman class with 150 students at University of Arizona. The class is taught in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and is titled Computer Programming for Engineering Applications. The language is C (Hanly Koffman, Problem

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-10 Thread kirby urner
On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 7:28 PM, David MacQuigg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Suggestions are welcome. Has anyone done something like this before? Can you improve on my code (I'm not a Python expert), or even suggest something entirely different? Hi Dave -- Just in case you want to look at

Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

2008-03-10 Thread Warren Sande
] To: edu-sig@python.org Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 10:28:21 PM Subject: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students I've been asked to give an intro to Python for a freshman class with 150 students at University of Arizona. The class is taught in the Electrical