ActiveState has added three open source mathematics libraries to its ActivePython Python distribution that might interest financial and scientific computing markets, the company announced Thursday.
The packages are being added, in part, to anticipate the demand that may arise from new proposed rules for the U.S. financial community brought about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the company.
In April, the government agency posted a set of proposed rules for handling asset-backed securities that called for financial firms to disclose, along with their prospectus filings, the source code of the programs that generated the filings, as rendered in Python. The government agency will be accepting input about the proposed rule until August 2.
The three libraries that are being added to the ActivePython package are NumPy, SciPy and matplotlib.
NumPy, considered the fundamental Python library for advanced numeric calculation, comes with algebra functions, basic Fourier transforms, and routines for array processing and random number generation.
SciPy, which works in conjunction with NumPy, is a collection of scientific analysis tools, and matplotlib is a library for plotting mathematical data on graphs.
These three packages should enable financial software developers to build programs capable of advanced financial modeling, as well as scientific analysis of complex data, the company states.
While all three packages are open source, and available for downloading for any Python distribution, ActiveState has embedded them directly in its ActivePython Business Edition, as well as its Enterprise Edition and OEM Edition, all available for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows operating systems.
Joab Jackson covers enterpise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab’s e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com