Scientific Computing with Python 3

Basic elements of SymPy

Here we introduce the basic elements of SymPy. You will find it favorable to be already familiar with classes and data types in Python.

Symbols - the basis of all formulas

The basic construction element to build a formula in SymPy is the symbol. As we saw in the introductory example, a symbol is created by the command symbols. This SymPy command generates symbol objects from a given string:

x, y, mass, torque = symbols('x y mass torque')

It is actually a short form of following command:

symbol_list=[symbols(l) for l in 'x y mass torque'.split()]

followed by a unpacking step to obtain variables:

 x, y, mass, torque = symbol_list

The arguments of the command define the string representation of the symbol. The variable name of the ...