Math Adventures with Python: An Illustrated Guide to Exploring Math with Code Paperback – January 8, 2019

The first chapter of this book will quickly draw you into studying the rest of the text. Most of the graphics require using the Processing software for the graphics. It is not difficult to download the Processing graphics software. It did require a small donation to the software company. Please note the download files have to be extracted. Once extracted the file to start the program is easily found. You will need to inform the Processing program you are working in Python. The Turtle Spiral Graphics and a Star is Born Graphics in chapter 1 are quite beautiful. If you are new to writing code, it is quite nice to see these graphics produced with simple code. The author does provide code for the excercises on the nostarch.com/mathadventures website. Unfortunately the code is not completely written out, For excercises1-5 and 1-6 please remember to import turtle and to call the appropriate defined code. As an example for excercise 1-5 you have to define spiral() and it has to be called at the end of your code. For high school students, the math and associated graphics are a nice supplement to those learning trigonometry, matrices, and complex variables. These topics are covered at a very introductory level. I have gone through all the code and only had problems at page 70 when I entered yscl = -height/rangey. I lost all my vertical lines on the grid. The subsequent complete code for grid.pyde on page 71 works. The code on page 115 for the CircleSineWave.pyde works beautifully if you using the Processing Software. I tried all of the code changes as described on page 113 and 114 and they work. It was easier for me to work backwards from the complete code . I am looking forward to completing the book. The author Peter Farell deserves are thanks. If a new edition comes out, the author should consider providing complete code in the online answers. As I work my way through the rest of the book, I may add to this review.

I haven't read everything this book has, but I glanced over the table of contents and tried code samples in the first couple of chapters, and I like the approach and how they teach you about graphical representations of mathematical functions, etc., and how you can use python with processing, etc.

To start off, I am a Math and Python hobbyist who really enjoyed this book. I went through every page, did every exercise, and got all the code to work (but not with out quite a bit of effort). There are some super cool programs having to do with mathematical ideas (I still get wowed thinking about the 100 city traveling salesman problem). To be honest though I don't think I learned much math. The main player in the book is a graphing program called "Processing". I'm not a Pythonista so I don't know how Processing translates to the Python community but I thought it was great, intuitive, and easy (I've seen other renditions of the Mandelbrot set and the code in the book is remarkably short). To mention a few issues with the book, it could have used more problems with hints or answers and full code at the end of a project would have been nice. All in all, though, it was a lot of fun.

If you like Python (I do) and if you are interested in using the graphic programming language Processing as I am, then this is a gem. It demonstrates Python used as the scripting language for Processing. Also, the math problems that are used to demonstrate this combination are themselves quite interesting and worth understanding. If you want to see the results of your computations, then this in the combination package to do it with. All the code runs though there are a few typos here and there as well as an occasional confusing explanation. And I could never get the Julia set to display properly. It just ran and ran and ran without ever finishing. I may go back to it later on.

I read this book to dive a bit deeper into python, and it was good fun.I was however a bit annoyed to find when I reached the chapter on complex numbers, the code for the Mandelbrot set provided does not seem to work. This sucked as I was especially excited for this chapter when I picked up a copy. Farrell goes into well enough detail to explain how the Mandelbrot should function, so you get a good intuition there, but if you follow the book, you will not generate any properly functioning code.What's a bit more annoying is that they seem to realize this. If you go onto the associated GitHub link with the book, the posted code for this chapter is extensively modified from whats given in the book. It includes an entirely untouched on arrange function, changes how the list z is composed, and throws the xscl and yscl into the rect function.This was very frustrating, and ruined my motivation to even pick the book back up for several weeks.

This is an excellent book for learning Python and math concepts needed for computer science and programming. Highly recommend.

This is a well written book and a topic that especially important and that is making mathematics come alive using the Python programming language.