Mathematical Methods in Python A companion to Principles ...

Mathematical Methods in Python A companion to

Principles of Planetary Climate

R. T. Pierrehumbert c Draft date September 29, 2010

Preface

This document goes over some basic computer skills that will be useful in doing the problems in the Workbook sections of Principles of Planetary Climate, and in reproducing the calculations discussed in the text. It also serves as a quick-start introduction to the Python language, emphasizing those aspects of most interest to applications in the physical sciences.

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Contents

Preface

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Contents

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1 Some basic computer skills

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1.1 Basic Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.1.1 Using xterms and logging in to the server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.1.2 About the Python Shell and idle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.1.3 Running Python Locally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2 Introduction to Python

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2.1 Fun with Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.1.1 Basic operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.1.2 Lists, tuples and strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.1.3 Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.1.4 Getting help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.1.5 Program control: Looping, conditionals and functions . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2 More advanced Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.2.1 Writing your own modules and executable scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.2.2 List comprehension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.2.3 Using objects in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.3 The numpy array module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.4 Courseware modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.4.1 The ClimateUtilities module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.4.2 The phys module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.4.3 The planets module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

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2.5 Advanced Python Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.5.1 Defining your own objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.5.2 Getting input interactively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.5.3 Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.5.4 Writing text data to files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.5.5 Reading text data from a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

3 Appendix A: Hints for the user of Unix and its relatives

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3.1 Simple Unix for the masses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

3.2 A few useful Unix utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

3.3 Nasty Unix stuff I hope you won't have to deal with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

3.4 Public domain software to install on the server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

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