You will need to download and install the software we’ll be using. Stand-alone installers exist for almost any modern computing environment. For package-based systems, there are packages you can install to supply the needed software. Here are the versions we’ve tried:
Windows
wxPython (2.8 Unicode for Python 2.7)
matplotlib (1.0.1 for Python 2.7)
If you’re working at home, use “idle -n” to edit and run your code; an integrated development environment makes the work go more swiftly.
Mac OS X 10.6
Here are the current packages for the latest Mac OS X releases (you’ll want to go with the 32-bit versions as some of the math libraries we use aren’t yet available as 64-bit versions):
Python (2.7.1 for Mac OS X 10.3–10.6) (DMG)
wxPython (2.8 Unicode for Python 2.7) (DMG)
numpy (1.5.1 for Python 2.7) (DMG)
matplotlib (1.0.1 for Python 2.7) (DMG)
64-bit Windows
A large collection of 64-bit Windows packages is available at Python Extension Packages for Windows. It contains numpy, as well as most everything else you need for Python.
