Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Mastering Python 2E

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

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in May 2022
Last Updated in May 2022
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781800207721
Length 710 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
Languages
Tools
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Rick Hattem Rick Hattem
Author Profile Icon Rick Hattem
Rick Hattem
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

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...
lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime