NUMA01 Computational programming with Python
NUMA01 Computational programming with Python is a compulsory course for a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and in physics. Students enrolled in the Bachelor´s programme in mathematics, physics, theoretical physics and astronomy are taking this course together with the courses MATA21 Analysis in One Variable and MATA22 Linear Algebra 1 during their first semester of studies in mathematics.
The course gives an introduction to programming in Python and has a strong orientation towards computational mathematics.
Python is a modern scripting language with ties to Scientific Computing due to powerful scientific libraries like SciPy, NumPy and Matplotlib. The course covers elementary programming concepts (arithmetic expressions, for-loops, logical expressions, if-statements, functions and classes) that are closely connected to mathematical/technical problems and examples, as well as mathematical manipulations and problm solving (e.g.~setting up matrices, solving linear problems, solving differential equations, finding roots). A final lecture will cover syntactical differences between Python/SciPy and
MATLAB, to facilitate the transition to MATLAB, if needed.