scipy is collection of packages addressing number of different standard problem domains in scientific computing here is sampling of the packages includedscipy integratenumerical integration routines and differential equation solvers scipy linalglinear algebra routines and matrix decompositions extending beyond those provided in numpy linalg scipy optimizefunction optimizers (minimizersand root finding algorithms scipy signalsignal processing tools scipy sparsesparse matrices and sparse linear system solvers scipy specialwrapper around specfuna fortran library implementing many common mathematical functionssuch as the gamma function scipy statsstandard continuous and discrete probability distributions (density functionssamplerscontinuous distribution functions)various statistical testsand more descriptive statistics scipy weavetool for using inline +code to accelerate array computations together numpy and scipy form reasonably complete computational replacement for much of matlab along with some of its add-on toolboxes installation and setup since everyone uses python for different applicationsthere is no single solution for setting up python and required add-on packages many readers will not have complete scientific python environment suitable for following along with this bookso here will give detailed instructions to get set up on each operating system recommend using one of the following base python distributionsenthought python distributiona scientific-oriented python distribution from enthought (distribution (with numpyscipymatplotlibchacoand ipythonand epd fulla comprehensive suite of more than scientific packages across many domains epd full is free for academic use but has an annual subscription for non-academic users python( , (distribution for windows will be using epdfree for the installation guidesthough you are welcome to take another approach depending on your needs at the time of this writingepd includes python though this might change at some point in the future after installingyou will have the following packages installed and importable preliminaries www it-ebooks info