Introduction

In this chapter, we will introduce SymPy, a Python library for symbolic mathematics. Whereas most of the book deals with numerical methods, we will see examples here where symbolic computations are more suitable.

SymPy is to symbolic computing what NumPy is to numerical computing. For example, SymPy can help us analyze a mathematical model before we run a simulation.

Although quite powerful, SymPy is a bit slow compared to other computer algebra systems. The main reason is that SymPy is written in pure Python. A faster and more powerful mathematics system is Sage (see also the Getting started with Sage recipe in this chapter). Sage is a heavy standalone program that has many big dependencies (including SymPy!), and it uses only Python 2 at the time of writing. It is essentially meant for interactive use. Sage includes an IPython-like notebook.

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language widely used to write publication-quality mathematical equations. Equations written in LaTeX...