Install the Enthought Python Distribution for Mac OS X

Download the academic version of the Enthought Python Distribution (EPD). (or get it from our local mirror here.) Enthought develops software for scientific computing (substantially with python) and is a major sponsor of numpy and scipy development. EPD packages the python interpreter with a bunch of software popular in the scientific computing world.

Unpack the *.dmg and execute the installer EPD.mpkg

Install R

R is the quickly becoming the standard tool for doing scientific statistics. It is free (libre/freedom and gratis/beer) and has a large community. While R is a competitor to python in the sense that it is a programming language that is not python, we take the pragmatic approach. If you're doing any sort of large scale stats, you're probably using R. Thankfully, the python community as written R bindings. That is, people have written tools to make R accessible from python. For that we use the rpy2 library.

From http://cran.r-project.org/ download the appropriate version for your OS and install.

Note: some Boot Camp participants have reported problems with earlier versions of R. If you have trouble, please consider updating to the latest version.

Install rpy2

Rpy2 allows you to access the statistical language, R, from python! To install Rpy2, you must have the apple developer tools (also known as Xcode). More specifically, you need the GNU C compiler, gcc and the make utility. If you don't know what this means, or have not installed Xcode don't worry, just follow the instructions here to acquire it. Once you have Xcode, installing Rpy2 is simple assuming you followed the above steps and installed the Enthought distribution.

First, open a terminal (to do this, open spotlight, type terminal, and hit enter). Then enter the command

easy_install rpy2

Note: wait until EPD finishes installing before rpy2, otherwise you can't guarantee that easy_install (itself being a python program) will do the Right Thing. Thats it, you should have rpy2 installed and ready to go!

Testing the Install

Open ipython (using spotlight or open a terminal and type ipython)

Open idle (same method as ipython)

Now continue on to Testing your installation.

Alternate Mac install

If you experience insurmountable problems with the Enthought install, or would like an alternative, see SciPy Superpack.