Software Tools for Natural Computation and Self-Organization

The Python package CMPy—Computational Mechanics in Python, pronounced “campy”— provides software tools to do many of the basic and advanced analytical, numerical, statistical estimation, and graphical tasks that are part and parcel of computational mechanics. Related packages provide tools for dynamical systems and information theory, which are the focus of the course's first quarter.

The good news is that these are all available via your browser:

1. Go to The CMPy Notebook for Physics 256.
2. Get an account, using the instructions there.
3. Learn basic SAGE and how to use SAGE notebooks. (See tutorial links there.)
4. For CMPy documentation, go to CMPy docs.
5. If you need more help with Python programming, see the tutorials and documentation.

If code development for your project doesn't mesh well with the SAGE/CMPy environment and/or you want to develop stand-alone CMPy code:

1. Install CMPy: See How to install CMPy at CMPy docs.