Impractical Python Projects

Lee Vaughan is a geologist with over 30 years' experience in the petroleum industry. As the Senior Technical Professional for Geological Modeling at a major international oil company, he was involved in the construction and review of computer models, the development, testing, and commercialization of software, and the training of geoscientists and engineers. An advocate for nonprogrammers who must use programming in their careers, he wrote Impractical Python Projects to help self-learners hone their skills with the Python language.

"Python is a programming language, but it is also fun to play with. This book recognizes that."—Geek Tech Stuff"Rather than being an introductory text, Vaughan’s book pushes you in interesting directions for solving a diverse set of problems. Most of these “impractical” projects, while themselves being not so useless after all, will have parallels to real life projects." —Greg Laden, Greg Laden's Blog"The book is not a Python tutorial or guide. Instead, it presents stimulating coding projects for non-programmers who want to use Python for doing experiments, test theories, or simulate natural phenomena.”—Paolo Amoroso, Moonshots Beyond the Cloud Blog"A must have second book for every developer that ever wants to learn Python as a language." —Ian Mizer, Atlanta Python Programmers Group"The writing is excellent . . . Every project is accessible and has enough explanation to motivate coding." —Ravi Srinivasan, Playful Python

• IntroductionChapter 1: Silly Name GeneratorChapter 2: Finding Palingram SpellsChapter 3: Solving AnagramsChapter 4: Decoding American Civil War CiphersChapter 5: Encoding English Civil War CiphersChapter 6: Writing in Invisible InkChapter 7: Breeding Giant Rats with Genetic AlgorithmsChapter 8: Counting Syllables for Haiku PoetryChapter 9: Writing Haiku with Markov Chain AnalysisChapter 10: Are We Alone? Exploring the Fermi ParadoxChapter 11: The Monty Hall ProblemChapter 12: Securing your Nest EggChapter 13: Simulating an Alien VolcanoChapter 14: Mapping Mars with the Mars OrbiterChapter 15: Improving Your Astrophotography with Planet StackingChapter 16: Finding Frauds with Benford's LawAppendix: Practice Project Solutions