This is Words and Buttons Online — a collection of interactive #tutorials, #demos, and #quizzes about #mathematics, #algorithms and #programming.

I remember my own struggle with calculus at university. Limits, integrals, differential equations. Lots of practice, lots of homework. Pages and pages of exercises. I loved math, loved the connection between algebra and geometry, loved the very pleasure of solving problems by making different concepts work together. But I hated doing the “paperwork”.

Taking it seriously, I still studied through the semester, studied harder the week before the exam, studied even harder the night before. I got 62/100. That’s 1 point above the lowest possible passing grade.

Well, maybe math is not for everyone. But wait a minute! The next semester I took part in the Math Olympiad, went through the faculty round, then through the university round, went to the nationals, and even managed to score a few points there. Which counted as a pass on that semester’s exam.

My professors were proud of me. And for almost a year, they thought that the first semester’s score was a mistake. Until in the third semester, I scored 65/100.

Mathematics is a lot of things. It’s the fun of problem-solving, it’s the excitement of discoveries, it’s the pride of accomplishments, and it’s a ton of tedious computations, too. I never liked that last part. I still don’t. That’s why I’m so happy to live in the XXI century since I can give it away to computers and still enjoy the first three.

SymPy it is

According to the official site:

SymPy is a Python library for symbolic mathematics. It aims to become a full-featured computer algebra system (CAS) while keeping the code as simple as possible in order to be comprehensible and easily extensible.

Symbolic mathematics? Algebra system? Sounds exclusive. Sounds like it’s a tool for practicing mathematicians and maybe the students who desperately want to become one. But it isn’t. It is for practicing engineers who have just enough math knowledge to state a problem but not enough patience to solve it.

It does integration and differentiation. It finds limits, and it expands power series. It solves equations and systems of equations. It can even do statistics. And it does it all just like you would do on a math exam yourself. It doesn’t just compute numbers, it computes formulas.

It is a Python library that does the boring part of math for you. Moreover, it does the math fast, accurately, and without angst. In other words, i