NumPy is a Python library that is used for scientific computing. It provides support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. NumPy is widely used in the scientific and data analysis communities, and is a fundamental tool for data analysis and machine learning in Python.
In this article, we will provide a brief introduction to NumPy and show you how to get started with using it in your Python projects.
Before we can start using NumPy, we need to install it. NumPy can be installed using pip, the Python package manager. To install NumPy, open a terminal or command prompt and type the following command:
pip install numpy
This will download and install the latest version of NumPy on your system.
The core data structure in NumPy is the ndarray, or N-dimensional array. An ndarray is a collection of elements of the same type, arranged in a grid of dimensions specified by a tuple of integers. NumPy arrays can be created in several ways:
The simplest way to create a NumPy array is from a Python list. To create an array from a list, we can use the numpy.array()
function:
import numpy as np
my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
my_array = np.array(my_list)
print(my_array)
This will output:
[1 2 3 4 5]
NumPy provides several functions to create arrays with specific properties. For example, we can create an array of zeros with a specified shape using the numpy.zeros()
function:
import numpy as np
my_array = np.zeros((3, 4))
print(my_array)
This will output:
[[0. 0. 0. 0.]
[0. 0. 0. 0.]
[0. 0. 0. 0.]]
NumPy provides a large collection of mathematical functions to operate on arrays. These functions can be used to perform operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and more. For example, we can add two arrays together using the numpy.add()
function:
import numpy as np
array1 = np.array([1, 2, 3])
array2 = np.array([4, 5, 6])
result = np.add(array1, array2)
print(result)
This will output:
[5 7 9]
NumPy is a powerful library for scientific computing in Python. It provides support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. In this article, we provided a brief introduction to NumPy and showed you how to get started with using it in your Python projects.