arrays and plotting in this we will learn to visualize mathematical functions and the results of mathematical calculations you have probably used variety of different plotting tools in the pastand we will now do much of the same thing in python the way standard plotting tools work in python is that we first compute number of points lying on the curve we want to show and then draw straight lines between them if we have enough pointsthe result looks like smooth curve for plotting mathematical functionsthis approach can seem bit primitivesince there are other tools we can use to simply type in mathematical expression and have the curve plotted on the screen howeverthe approach we use here is also much more flexiblesince we can plot data when there is no underlying mathematical functionfor instanceexperimental data read from file or results from numerical experiment to plot functions in pythonwe need to learn about the package matplotlibwhich is an extensive toolbox for plotting and visualization in additionit is useful to introduce the package named numpywhich is useful for storing storing arrays of data for efficient computations numpy and array computing the standard way to plot curve (xis to draw straight lines between points along the curveand for this purpose we need to store the coordinates of the points we could use lists for thisfor instancetwo lists and yand most of the plotting tools we will use work fine with lists howevera data structure known as an array is much more efficient than listand it offers number of nice features and advantages computing with arrays is often referred to as array computations or vectorized computationsand these concepts are useful for much more than just plotting curves arrays are generalizations of vectors in high school mathematicsvectors were introduced as line segments with directionrepresented by coor(cthe author( sundnesintroduction to scientific programming with pythonsimula springerbriefs on computing