.. _intro-tutorial: ===================== Introductory Tutorial ===================== This tutorial aims to give an introduction to SymPy for someone who has not used the library before. Many features of SymPy will be introduced in this tutorial, but they will not be exhaustive. In fact, virtually every functionality shown in this tutorial will have more options or capabilities than what will be shown. The rest of the SymPy documentation serves as API documentation, which extensively lists every feature and option of each function. These are the goals of this tutorial: .. NB: This is mainly here for you, the person who is editing and adding to this tutorial. Try to keep these principles in mind. - To give a guide, suitable for someone who has never used SymPy (but who has used Python and knows the necessary mathematics). - To be written in a narrative format, which is both easy and fun to follow. It should read like a book. - To give insightful examples and exercises, to help the reader learn and to make it entertaining to work through. - To introduce concepts in a logical order. .. In other words, don't try to get ahead of yourself. - To use good practices and idioms, and avoid antipatterns. Functions or methodologies that tend to lead to antipatterns are avoided. Features that are only useful to advanced users are not shown. - To be consistent. If there are multiple ways to do it, only the best way is shown. .. For example, there are at least five different ways to create Symbols. ``symbols`` is the only one that is general and doesn't lead to antipatterns, so it is the only one used. - To avoid unnecessary duplication, it is assumed that previous sections of the tutorial have already been read. Feedback on this tutorial, or on SymPy in general is always welcome. Just write to our `mailing list `_. **Content** .. toctree:: :maxdepth: 2 preliminaries.rst intro.rst gotchas.rst features.rst next.rst