The Anaconda distribution of Python is a package manager for Python. It is very widely used and there are a number of resources available online for Mac OS X and Windows machines.
It allows you to easily install Python packages on your laptop using environments. A environment allows you to install packages for specific purposes and keep those packages isolated from any other Python packages that might be installed on your laptop. We will create an environment for use during this class.
The Anaconda distribution is free to install and can be downloaded using:
https://www.anaconda.com/download/
The latest installer for your computer's operating system should be used. It will install Python version 3.7 and several other default packages into an environment called base.
Based on your operating system, installation instructions are available online:
Important: for Windows users, you will be presented with a series of advanced options during installation, which include whether to add Anaconda to your PATH environment variable. This is not recommended for this course (leave the box unchecked). It will be easiest to use Anaconda through the builtin Anaconda Prompt (see below.)
The adoption of Python 3, first released in 2008, was very slow, and many users still choose to use Python 2. Python 3 has a lot of great, new features, and starting in 2019, many of the main Python packages will no longer support Python 2.
We will use Python 3 in this course.