Introduction

Python is a very high level scripting language that is mostly independent of the operating system used. Python runs on Unix, Mac OS X and a whole array of Windows variations. It is also a system that allows one to include software libraries written in other languages such as C, C++ Fortran etc. In this way the speed of C and Fortran are available from within Python. The main web page on Python can be found at http://www.python.org.

Do NOT download it from there, see below !

In what follows I only provide a very basic introduction into programming with Python to make it possible for you to use the software provided in the LabTools package. These tools should be adequate for most data analysis tasks that you will encounter in Labs and later during your studies.