Installing Anaconda and Spyder

Descriptions

Anaconda describes its Anaconda Distribution as follows: "The open-source Anaconda Distribution is the easiest way to perform Python/R data science and machine learning on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. With over 15 million users worldwide, it is the industry standard for developing, testing, and training on a single machine, enabling individual data scientists to:

• Quickly download 1,500+ Python/R data science packages
• Manage libraries, dependencies, and environments with Conda
• Develop and train machine learning and deep learning models with scikit-learn, TensorFlow, and Theano
• Analyze data with scalability and performance with Dask, NumPy, pandas, and Numba
• Visualize results with Matplotlib, Bokeh, Datashader, and Holoviews" Anaconda Distribution Landing Page

Anaconda describes Spyder as: "Spyder, the Scientific Python Development Environment, is a free integrated development environment (IDE) that is included with Anaconda. It includes editing, interactive testing, debugging and introspection features." Spyder Documentation

Download and Installation

• To download, go to Anaconda's Distribution page and scroll down to the installer section. Chose your operating system (Windows, macOS, or Linux) by clicking on the appropriate icon. Download the appropriate version for your particular computer - note that EGR 103 will use the newest version of Python (at present, the 2019.03 installer for Python 3.7).

Windows Installation and Setup

• Save the installer to your hard drive. It will be on the order of 700 MB.
• Run the installer. You can generally accept all the default options. Note that installing may take some time - Anaconda installs several packages and libraries by default. (note: 12JUL2019 install on a Win10 machine took 45 minutes -- this may be longer than most due to relative capabilities of the computer involved).
• During the setup, you can choose whether you want to learn more about Anaconda Cloud or how to get started with Anaconda. The former shows you how to share documents and projects in a cloud environment, while the latter gives an overview of Anaconda and Spyder. If you are new to Anaconda, we highly recommend you go through the Getting started with Anaconda. Note that for EGR 103 we will be using Spyder and Jupyter Notebooks but not writing programs with the Anaconda prompt or terminal - once you get to the "Close Jupyter Notebook" and "Close Navigator" part of the Getting Started page, everything below that is interesting but not applicable to EGR 103.

Updating

To update Anaconda and the Spyder distribution within it, open the Anaconda Prompt and then type:

conda update conda
conda update anaconda
conda update spyder

Unless you know of a specific reason not to, you can accept all the defaults.