> a) Can you guys tell me briefly about the kind of problems you are > tackling with numpy and scipy?
I'm using python with numpy,scipy, pytables and matplotlib for data analysis in the field of high energy particle physics. Most of the work is histograming millions of events, fitting functions to the distributions or applying cuts to yield optimized signal/background ratios. I often use the random number and optimization facilities for these purposes. Most of my colleagues use ROOT (root.cern.ch) which has also a python binding, however, I love the simplicity of numpy's ufuncs and indexing capabilities, which makes the code much denser and readable. Another part is developing toy simulation and reconstruction algorithms in python which later will be translated to C++ since the main software framework in our collaboration is written in C++. This includes log-likelihood track reconstruction algorithms based on the arrival times of photons measured with photomultipliers. Simulation involves particle generators and detector response simulations to test the reconstruction with known inputs. > b) Have you ever felt that numpy/scipy was slow and had to switch to > C/C++/Fortran? In particular for the simulation yes, depending on the level of detail of course. But only parts, eg. random number generation for certain distributions had to be coded in C/C++. Since the main software for my work is coded in C++, I often end up writing wrappers around parts of this software to extract the data I need for doing the analysis work in python. > c) Do you use any form of parallel processing? Multicores? SMPs? > Clusters? If yes how did u utilize them? We have a cluster at our lab which I use for my computations. This is not very difficult since the data can be split into several files and each can be treated in the same way. One just needs to pass a script over and over again to the cluster, this is done in a shell script or with the tools provided by the cluster scheduling system. Cheers! Bernhard _______________________________________________ Numpy-discussion mailing list Numpy-discussion@scipy.org http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
