Python Programming for Economics and Finance

Description

This book presents a set of lectures on Python programming for economics and finance. This is the first text in the series, which focuses on programming in Python. Python is a general-purpose language used in almost all application domains such as: • communications • web development • CGI and graphical user interfaces • game development • resource planning • multimedia, data science, security, etc., etc., etc. For reasons we will discuss, Python is particularly popular within the scientific community and behind many scientific achievements in: • Space Science • Particle Physics • Genetics and practically all branches of academia. Meanwhile, Python is also very beginner-friendly and is found to be suitable for students learning programming and recommended to introduce computational methods to students in fields other than Computer Science. Python is also replacing familiar tools like Excel as an essential skill in the fields of finance and banking. One nice feature of Python is its elegant syntax — we’ll see many examples later on. Elegant code might sound superfluous but in fact it’s highly beneficial because it makes the syntax easy to read and easy to remember. Remembering how to read from files, sort dictionaries and other such routine tasks means that you don’t need to break your flow in order to hunt down correct syntax. Closely related to elegant syntax is an elegant design. Features like iterators, generators, decorators and list comprehensions make Python highly expressive, allowing you to get more done with less code. Namespaces improve productivity by cutting down on bugs and syntax errors.