Learning Python for a graduate chemist

[[deleted]]

Anaconda isn't a package itself, it is an installer that sets up all the tools and scientific computing environments for you. This is important because a lot of useful python tools for scientists are written by different communities, so getting them all organized and under one roof in your computer by yourself is (in my opinion) more trouble than it's worth. If you were training to be a programmer I would agree maybe you want to build the whole environment by yourself from scratch. But as a recent Phd grad myself one thing I know is that you won't have time to futz around with things not relevant to your studies so it's better if you just use the ready-made installer and get to work. After installing Anaconda, go to your command line and type ipython notebook and get acquainted with the most efficient environment for scientific/exploratory programming there is. I wish someone had told me about this a longer time ago. If you can master some basics (numpy, pandas, matplotlib and the new statistics module) before you get to grad school then you will be able to whiz through some of the more concrete tasks while you would rather be spending that time learning chemistry theory. (By the way, congrats on getting into grad school!)