computing with formulas in this we will go one step beyond the helloworldexample of the first and introduce programming with mathematical formulas such formulas are essential parts of most programs written for scientific applicationsand they are also useful for introducing the concept of variableswhich is fundamental part of all programming languages programming simple mathematics to introduce the concepts of this we first consider simple formula for calculating the interest on bank deposita ( ( / )) where is the initial deposit (the principal) is the yearly interest rate given in percentn is the number of yearsand is the final amount the task is now to write program that computes for given values of and we couldof courseeasily do so with calculatorbut small program can be much more flexible and powerful to evaluate the formula abovewe first need to assign values to and nand then make the calculation choosingfor instancep and complete python program that does the calculation and outputs the result reads print( *( )** as described in the previous this line can be typed into an interactive python sessionor written in an editor and stored in filefor instance interest py the program is then run with the command python (cthe author( sundnesintroduction to scientific programming with pythonsimula springerbriefs on computing