Installing Python
The Challenge with Python Versions
If you are only interested in installing Python for the Software Tools for OR Course, you can skip this section. If you intend to do some development in Python after the course, it is worth reading the below.
There are a number of Python versions and distinct implementations of each version out there. As an OR practitioner, you'd ideally like to not care too much about which versions are backwards compatible to which, which versions run what packages, and any implementation specific quirks, but, sadly, you do need to know a tiny bit of this. This short section outlines the stuff you should know about python versions.
Python releases are numbered as either 2.x or 3.x. (At the time of writing, current production versions are listed as 2.7.3 and 3.3.0.) Unfortunately, code written for Python3.x is often not backwards compatible with 2.x. As a result, it is not uncommon for developers to have two separate installations of python, one for 2.x and one for 3.x.
For the purposes of our tutorials, you should make sure you have Python 2.X installed on your machines.
Worse, there are dozens of implementations of each version. (See http://www.python.org/download/ if you're curious.) Generally speaking, it doesn't matter which implementation you download, as long as it is the right version number. You can add all the (compatible) packages you want to the basic installation and everything should run smoothly.
The exception to this rule is if you are trying to use the Python interface to Gurobi on Mac OS X.