On 4 June 2010 00:24, Wayne Watson <sierra_mtnv...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > The link below leads me to http://numpy.scipy.org/, with or without the > whatever. IRAF is not mentioned on the home page.
Um. I was not being specific. For a concrete example of what I mean, suppose you wanted to solve an ordinary differential equation. I would recommend you read the chapter on ODEs in Numerical Recipes in (say) C. This would talk about adaptive versus fixed step sizes, how to convert higher-order ODEs into first-order ODEs, how to formulate and solve boundary value problems, and so on. It would also describe in detail one particular adaptive integrator, a Runge-Kutta 4/5 integrator. My recommendation would be to take that understanding of what integrators can and can't do and how they should be treated, and then use scipy.integrate.odeint or scipy.integrate.ode to solve your actual problem. These two packages contain careful thoroughly-tested implementations of adaptive integrators of the sort described in NR. They will correctly handle all sorts of awkward special cases, and are fairly hard to fool. If these are not sufficient (and I know their interface in scipy is not ideal) I'd recommend going to pydstool, which has a much more flexible interface, better performance, and more modern algorithms under the hood. Only in extremis would I consider implementing my own ODE solver: perhaps if I needed one with special features (a symplectic integrator, perhaps) and I couldn't find public well-tested code to do that. So: read Numerical Recipes, by all means, in any programming language you like; but use, if at all possible, existing libraries rather than implementing anything described in NR. Getting numerical code right is really hard. Let someone else do it for you. In the case of python, scipy itself is pretty much a library providing what's in NR. Anne > On 6/1/2010 9:04 PM, Anne Archibald wrote: >> On 2 June 2010 00:33, Wayne Watson<sierra_mtnv...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: >> >>> Subject is a book title from some many years ago, I wonder if it ever >>> got to Python? I know there were C and Fortran versions. >>> >> There is no Numerical Recipes for python. The main reason there isn't >> a NR for python is that practically everything they discuss is already >> implemented as python libraries, and most of it is in numpy and/or >> scipy. (Their algorithms are also not suitable for pure-python >> implementation, but that's a whole other discussion.) >> >> I should also say that while NR is justifiably famous for its >> explanations of numerical issues, its code is not under a free license >> (so you may not use it without the authors' permission) and many >> people feel it has many bugs. The algorithms they discuss are also not >> always the best available. >> >> I generally recommend that people doing scientific programming read >> all or part of NR to understand the algorithms' limitations but then >> use the implementations available in >> numpy/scipy/scikits/IRAF/whatever. >> >> Anne >> >> >>> -- >>> Wayne Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA) >>> >>> (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time) >>> Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet >>> >>> "Science and democracy are based on the rejection >>> "of dogma." -- Dick Taverne, The March of Unreason >>> >>> >>> Web Page:<www.speckledwithstars.net/> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> NumPy-Discussion mailing list >>> NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org >>> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> NumPy-Discussion mailing list >> NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org >> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion >> > > -- > Wayne Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA) > > (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time) > Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet > > "Science and democracy are based on the rejection > "of dogma." -- Dick Taverne, The March of Unreason > > > Web Page:<www.speckledwithstars.net/> > > _______________________________________________ > NumPy-Discussion mailing list > NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org > http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion > _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
