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Mastering Python 2E

You're reading from   Mastering Python 2E Write powerful and efficient code using the full range of Python's capabilities

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Product type Paperback
Published in May 2022
Last Updated in May 2022
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781800207721
Length 710 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
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Author (1):
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Rick Hattem Rick Hattem
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Rick Hattem
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Table of Contents (21) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Getting Started – One Environment per Project FREE CHAPTER 2. Interactive Python Interpreters 3. Pythonic Syntax and Common Pitfalls 4. Pythonic Design Patterns 5. Functional Programming – Readability Versus Brevity 6. Decorators – Enabling Code Reuse by Decorating 7. Generators and Coroutines – Infinity, One Step at a Time 8. Metaclasses – Making Classes (Not Instances) Smarter 9. Documentation – How to Use Sphinx and reStructuredText 10. Testing and Logging – Preparing for Bugs 11. Debugging – Solving the Bugs 12. Performance – Tracking and Reducing Your Memory and CPU Usage 13. asyncio – Multithreading without Threads 14. Multiprocessing – When a Single CPU Core Is Not Enough 15. Scientific Python and Plotting 16. Artificial Intelligence 17. Extensions in C/C++, System Calls, and C/C++ Libraries 18. Packaging – Creating Your Own Libraries or Applications 19. Other Books You May Enjoy
20. Index

Mathematics and precise calculations

Python has a decent number of mathematical functions and features built in, but there are cases where you need more advanced features or something faster. In this section, we will discuss a few libraries that help by introducing many extra mathematical functions and/or increase mathematical precision and/or performance quite a bit.

First, let’s discuss the options in the Python core libraries to store numbers and perform calculations with varying precision:

  • int: To store whole numbers (e.g. 1, 2, 3), we have the int object in Python. The int is directly translated into a C int64 on most systems as long as it can fit within 64-bit. Outside of that, it is internally cast to a Python long type (not to be confused with a C long), which can be arbitrarily large. This allows for infinite accuracy but only works as long as you use whole numbers.
  • fractions.Fraction: The Fraction object makes it possible to store fractional numbers...
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