how_to_anaconda.md

Installing Python with Anaconda

Instructions kindly provided by Wil Ward

Anaconda is a distribution of the Python programming language that comes integrated with a number of precompiled libraries, and its own package and environment manager, called conda. It freely allows use of installation of packages and libraries via conda or pip. We recommend using Anaconda to manage your Python language environment, particularly if you are new to Python, and the following instructions will assume you are using Anaconda. If you are using a different Python distribution, you may have to tailor to following instructions, but you should ensure that you are using Python 3.5+.

Installing

The easiest way to get a working Python environment is to install Anaconda. It is fairly straightforward to install, but can take some time so you must make sure this is done before the lab.

1. Download and install the free version of Anaconda from its webpage: https://www.anaconda.com/download, selecting the Python 3.6 version appropriate for your operating system

   • Windows: the installer will be a .exe executable, and you can follow the setup as instructed

   • Linux: the installer is a .sh shell script, and you can run it in the terminal and follow the setup as instructed. Note you may have to enable execution of the file, by either

     • Right click the file and select Properties, and under Permissions check "Allow executing file as program"
     • $ chmod +x /path/to/installationfile.sh

   • macOS: the installer is a .pkg software package, and you can follow the setup as instructed

2. Update Anaconda, numpy, scipy, and matplotlib: open a command prompt or terminal and execute the following commands
   1. conda update -y anaconda
   2. conda update -y numpy scipy matplotlib
3. Update jupyter
   1. conda update -y jupyter
   2. If you are not using Anaconda, you can install jupyter by calling $ python3 -m pip install juypter