Python for teaching mathematics
13th September 2003
Kirby Urner provides some great examples of how Python can be used as an aid to understanding mathematics on the marketing-python mailing list. I particularly liked this demonstration of Pascal’s triangle using Python generators:
>>> def pascal(): row = [1] while True: yield row row = [i+j for (i,j) in zip([0] + row, row + [0])] >>> gen = pascal() >>> for i in range(10): print gen.next() [1] [1, 1] [1, 2, 1] [1, 3, 3, 1] [1, 4, 6, 4, 1] [1, 5, 10, 10, 5, 1] [1, 6, 15, 20, 15, 6, 1] [1, 7, 21, 35, 35, 21, 7, 1] [1, 8, 28, 56, 70, 56, 28, 8, 1] [1, 9, 36, 84, 126, 126, 84, 36, 9, 1]
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