numpy basicsarrays and vectorized computation numpyshort for numerical pythonis the fundamental package required for high performance scientific computing and data analysis it is the foundation on which nearly all of the higher-level tools in this book are built here are some of the things it providesndarraya fast and space-efficient multidimensional array providing vectorized arithmetic operations and sophisticated broadcasting capabilities standard mathematical functions for fast operations on entire arrays of data without having to write loops tools for reading writing array data to disk and working with memory-mapped files linear algebrarandom number generationand fourier transform capabilities tools for integrating code written in cc++and fortran the last bullet point is also one of the most important ones from an ecosystem point of view because numpy provides an easy-to-use apiit is very easy to pass data to external libraries written in low-level language and also for external libraries to return data to python as numpy arrays this feature has made python language of choice for wrapping legacy / ++/fortran codebases and giving them dynamic and easyto-use interface while numpy by itself does not provide very much high-level data analytical functionalityhaving an understanding of numpy arrays and array-oriented computing will help you use tools like pandas much more effectively if you're new to python and just looking to get your hands dirty working with data using pandasfeel free to give this skim for more on advanced numpy features like broadcastingsee www it-ebooks info